


Legacies

by bilquis



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: New Republic Era - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: X-wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Genre: Adventures and excitement for Jedi and everyone else too, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ballroom Dancing, Capable Characters on Actual Missions!, Dealing with remnants of the Empire, Finding time for romance amid intergalactic strife is hard, Force Bond (Star Wars), Han Solo is a damn good General, I dislike Bothan drama and desire to keep it to the absolute minimum, Jedi aren't the only Force-sensitives around, Luke and Mara do make a good team, Luke has fucked up but not cataclysmically, Multi, NR Intelligence is run by Scarily Smart Women, Non-fairytale love stories are the best love stories, Organically developing relationships, Redemption, Sins of the Fathers, Slavery, Strong Female Characters, Talon Karrde has excellent intuition, Wedge Antilles is a surprisingly good General, blaster diplomacy, keeping the bulk of the book plots but dropping the tiresome bits, long hauls and slow burns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2018-10-17 06:39:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 80,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10588494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bilquis/pseuds/bilquis
Summary: 15 ABYA year after the signing of the Galactic Reunification Treaty, the New Republic enjoys a period of unprecedented stability. Independent and formerly Imperial-led worlds send delegates to Coruscant to negotiate alliances. Republic peacekeepers work to eradicate traces of the Imperial remnant, and the newly-formed Federation of Independent Traders reopens old trade routes and forges new ones under the banner of the Republic.Yavin 4: The Jedi Praxeum is thriving under new systems of training introduced by Luke Skywalker in the aftermath of Exar Kun’s defeat and Kyp Durron's death.Tatooine: Mara Jade investigates rumours of the rise of a new smuggler’s cartel with ties to Ryloth and the black market spice trade, as well as ominous suggestions of a darker type of merchandise. Luke Skywalker returns to his homeworld, drawn by visions of his father and dark ripples in the Force from a source he cannot clearly see.Coruscant: High Councillor Leia Organa-Solo receives emissaries from the troubled independent system of Antares, as Talon Karrde and Han Solo negotiate terms of surrender from the former Imperial stronghold and valuable agrarian world of Ororos.





	1. Tremors

**Author's Note:**

> I have taken some liberties with the canon as established in the Star Wars novels. For instance: Gara Petothel doesn't exist here, Callista Ming is long gone, Fey'lya exhausts and irritates me and I have hamstrung his role in my stories. Leia Organa is possibly the most capable character in the SW universe and that is reflected in her role here. Likewise with Talon Karrde's idealistic streak, Han Solo's intelligence, and other traits of key characters that I felt were worth highlighting. Several characters are written according to how I envisioned them for myself, in appearance and in behaviour. This may differ from how readers envisioned these characters, and I make no apologies for that. 
> 
> Summary updated for accuracy!
> 
> This is a long work. It was written as a saga and became a long saga. If you take the time to read it, I hope you enjoy it.

Blackmoon Base, on the lush forested world of Borleias, had, from comparatively humble beginnings in the aftermath of the Battle of Endor, developed over the years into one of the most prized possessions of the New Republic in its growing ascendancy. All four of New Republic Starfighter Command’s elite squadrons operated out of Blackmoon, as did several of the fleet’s flagship cruisers, and its proximity to Coruscant made it a command centre of no little strategic value; consequently, it was an enormous, bustling metropolis in miniature, with state-of-the-art facilities that were second to none. 

 

Blackmoon lacked a conventional pilot’s lounge. Instead, a large grassy tree-lined space had been enclosed, furnished, and a bar installed at one end to serve the purpose. After the first winter, a retractable roof and climate control system had been added in deference to a barrage of complaints that, by their sheer number, had nearly shorted out the hapless protocol droid assigned to process them. That done, its success was immediate and assured. 

 

A complex set of unspoken unwritten rules governed the occupation of the Park, as it had come to be known. Every class and category of Blackmoon’s many and varied inhabitants was catered for. Each of the four primary squadrons of NR Starfighter Command had their own spaces, in comfortable proximity to the bar and each other but distinctly separate, and on the opposite end of the Park from where the mechanics and noncombatant crew groups congregated. A sprawling ziggurat-style edifice flanked and surmounted by stone-and-metal sculptures of X-wings made up Wraith Squadron’s section, equipped with clusters of benches, chairs and tables on each level interspersed with more private alcoves and banks of computer terminals.  

 

On the lowest level, big Kell Tainer sat in an egg-shaped chair, nursing a drink and a heavily-bandaged hand. Across the table from him, Ton Phanan was absorbed in repairs to his own right hand, though his was a cybernetic prosthetic. His one real eye was narrowed in concentration and an untouched drink sat in front of him, the ice in it nearly melted away. 

 

“Are you still working on that?” That was Maher Sayid, a tall broad-shouldered human with burnished-brown skin and unruly, jet-black hair that he was forever pushing out of his eyes. “Why not just go to the medcentre?”

 

“I’d be working on myself there too, you know. I’d rather do it here where there’s alcohol and - usually - more congenial company.”

 

“Does drinking while doing surgery usually work out well for you?” inquired Maher, and laughed when Phanan responded only with a rude hand gesture around his electrosplicer. 

 

“What’s wrong with the company at the medcentre? I thought you liked Dr. Kest,” said Falynn Sandkimmer. She was lying on a recliner beside Myn Donos, who was on his third drink to the others’ first and had slipped into a contented silence, one arm wrapped comfortably around Falynn’s waist. “I like her. She’s nice.” A hint of accusation crept into her voice. “Have you been annoying her?” 

 

“Seldes Kest and I like each other just fine,” replied Phanan. “However, she has been playing nursemaid to our honoured visitors from Obroa-skai for the last eight days and while she is more than capable of being polite and helpful to them, I am not.” He prodded at a minuscule circuit board with slightly unnecessary force and cursed when it slipped even further out of alignment, sending up a small shower of sparks from the region immediately below his wrist. 

 

“Do you need help?” asked Tyria Sarkin. She reached across Kell and caught several small cylindrical fuses just before they rolled off the edge of the table. “I think you may need help.”

 

“Thanks.” Phanan grimaced. “There’s not much left to do - just this damned - aha!” With an audible click, the board seated itself and all five fingers of his hand flexed outward. “There it is,” he announced triumphantly.

 

The others applauded.

 

“Nice one,” said Myn lazily, opening one eye and then closing it again. He finished off his drink in one long pull and hit a button on the small console set into the table’s surface to call over a server droid. 

 

“What are these?” Kell had taken the fuses from Tyria and was examining them minutely. 

 

“Nothing you can use in the mech bay, so give them back.”    

 

“I only asked.”

 

“And I’m only making sure you don’t abscond with medical centre property.” Phanan snapped the access hatch of the cybernetic closed and clenched the hand into an experimental fist. “Ah. Good as new.”

 

“I didn’t know we had visitors from Obroa-skai.” Shalla Nelprin sank into a chair, a towel slung around her neck. She began to unwind the wraps she wore bound around each hand for unarmed combat training; there were few days that Shalla did not manage to find some time to train. “What are librarians doing here?” 

      

“They’re researchers, apparently.” There was heavy disdain in Phanan’s voice. “As to what they’re doing here - asking Seldes idiotic questions about combat surgery and resupplying for their return, I believe, which is happening not a moment too soon.”

 

“They are not like any Obroa-skai researchers I knew.” Piggy, more properly Voort SaBinring, the Wraiths’ Gamorrean pilot, had appeared, with a tray of drinks he had collected from the bar. “One of the server droids has malfunctioned,” he said by way of explanation. “One of Officer Daine’s crew threw a hydrospanner at it. These were getting warm.”

 

“You’re a prince, Piggy,” said Shalla over the chorus of thanks and the clinking of glasses and bottles being handed out. “What do you mean they’re not like the researchers you knew?” 

 

He eased himself into a chair with his glass - specially made to accommodate his facial structure by the Park’s custodian droid - and the edges of his snout creased around his tusks; the Gamorrean equivalent of a frown. “Those I met on Obroa-skai were wise, but they were also kind. They had never seen a creature like me before, but they helped me. They did not treat me as…as a specimen. These beings are different. They are concerned only with their data, and their mission. They have been demanding of Dr. Kest, and they have been rude to Officer Ventress.” He paused, then - almost reluctantly, for his reserved analytical nature did not usually lend itself to such bald admissions - added, “I dislike them very much.” 

 

“I don’t blame you, they sound awful,” said Falynn. 

 

“They are,” Phanan agreed. “Pompous old bags of wind.”

 

“Not all of them,” said Kell. At Phanan’s quizzical look, he elaborated, “There’s one. I’ve seen her the last few times I’ve been at the medcentre for this - ” he waved his bandaged hand “ - and she’s different. It doesn’t seem like she’s even part of their team. They treat her pretty badly.”

 

“Kell is correct,” Piggy said. “I have seen the way they speak to her. It is not pleasant.” He gestured to a mostly unused part of the Park a few metres away, a dim and unprepossessing corner shaded by a straggling treeline. “That is her. I do not know her name.” 

 

Sitting alone at a long trestle table in the corner was a human woman, conspicuous among the uniformed NR military, crew, pilots and staff in what were unmistakeably civilian clothes, albeit drab, utilitarian ones in shades of black and dull green. A protective lab coat and gauntlets lay in a heap on the bench beside her, along with a satchel and small short-range commlink. She was staring into her drink, her expression bleak and shuttered.   

 

“She looks like she’s having a bad day,” said Tyria, always kind-hearted. “Poor thing.”

 

Phanan took in the defeated slump of the woman’s shoulders and her tired, drawn face. “I think it’s been more than just the one day.”

 

She was certainly nowhere near as old as the other Obroa-skai delegates he had seen, nor was she wearing the ostentatious robes and ornamentation they favoured. Masses of glossy black hair fell, unbound, in wavy curls to just below her shoulders; with her head bowed it hung about her face like a protective curtain. As though she had sensed them watching her she glanced up briefly and he saw her huge, dark eyes, unhappy but still beautiful with their thick flaring brows and long lashes. She wore small studs of wrought metal in her ears, and there was even one in her right nostril, set with a single tiny bloodstone gleaming against her brown-ochre skin. Phanan realised he had never seen a human woman with a pierced nose before. It looked good on her.                

 

Her commlink shrilled. Without looking at it she hit the kill switch, and drew a deep breath, as though collecting herself. Then she drained her drink in a single gulp, snatched up her things and rose to leave. 

 

“Probably a trainee,” said Phanan. “Overworked and underappreciated. I remember it well.” He watched her round a corner and disappear behind a crowd of laughing mechanics. Almost a shame, he thought idly, that she would be leaving soon. She, at least, seemed interesting.  

 

“Are they still working on your hand?” Shalla was saying to Kell disbelievingly, and the unhappy woman from Obroa-Skai slipped out of Phanan’s mind. “We’re trying something new,” he explained. “It’s much slower than bacta, but the loss of fine motor function is so minimal it’s practically nonexistent.”

 

Kell hefted his hand. “It’s more healed than it looks, actually. The bandages are just to keep infection out.”

 

“What’s wrong with just using bacta?” asked Maher.

 

“Nothing,” Phanan said, “If you have it. Which may not always be the case.”

 

“And almost wasn’t,” Tyria said. None of them really needed reminding. Rogue Squadron had borne the brunt of the loss - years of imprisonment, torture and whispers of treason had taken a toll on Tycho Celchu in particular, who had aged beyond his years and carried some scars that would never fade and wounds that would never fully heal - but Wraith Squadron had many reasons of its own to remember Ysanne Isard and the bacta wars of many years before. 

 

“The Iceheart taught the Republic one thing at least,” Phanan said. “Our combat medicine needed overhauling. We were relying on old techniques because they worked most of the time, and a steady bacta supply because we’d never not had that. Not even the Empire had contingency plans for a supply failure.”

 

“This is Imperial research, though,” Kell pointed out. 

 

“Yes and no. It came from labs on Imperial worlds, but none of it was commisioned by the Empire or requisitioned. We don’t really know why. They knew about it, but they never used it. Perhaps they thought that their protocols didn’t need improving with risky experimental stuff.” 

 

“Overconfidence is something of an Imperial trait,” agreed Kell.    

 

“Something Phanan would know all about.” Garik Loran, who never went by his true first name, had approached unnoticed, and took advantage of the slight stir caused by his appearance to swipe Phanan’s drink. “Ugh,” he grimaced. “This is _warm_. I hadn’t realised the lower ranks had regressed to quite this level of barbarity.”

 

Phanan made an eloquent gesture with his left hand, even more explicit than the one he had directed at Maher, and Face Loran grinned at his friend. They were, in truth, closer than most brothers, but any suggestion that such a relationship might merit fewer insults and more politeness would have been openly scoffed at by both of them. 

 

“And where have you been, O Glorious Leader?” asked Donos. 

 

“I’d say he was with his other friends, but we all know those don’t exist.” Phanan dropped three cubes of ice from a passing serving droid’s tray into his drink. 

 

“I was with Officer Ventress,” said Face. “And Dorset, and Todra.”

 

Donos raised an eyebrow, and the others quieted, their interest piqued. Dorset Konnair and Todra Mayn were the leaders of Nova and Polearm Squadrons respectively, which, along with the Rogues and Wraiths, made up the Elite Group of New Republic Starfighter Command. Sia Ventress, a tough no-nonsense woman from Kell Tainer’s homeworld of Sluis Van, was Blackmoon’s ranking deck officer.

 

“Trouble?” asked Shalla.

 

“Not entirely.”     

 

“Visitors,” said Phanan. “That would be my guess. Important visitors. Or problematic visitors. Both?”

 

“You’re not wrong,” said Face. Then, he said briskly, “You all should probably finish your drinks. Squadron briefing in six standard hours.”

 

Donos groaned. “By the Sith, Face. I’ve only been off shift two hours. What’s going on?”

 

“That’s what the squadron briefing is for, Lieutenant. But I can tell you this: General Antilles will be leading it.”

 

“He’s back from Tatooine?” Shalla sounded almost offended. As the member of Wraith Squadron most involved in New Republic Intelligence, it was rare indeed for anyone to know about developments in a squadron mission before her. 

 

“No, he’s being patched in,” Face said. “We do have a guest, though,” he added with a grin.  

 

Shalla opened her mouth, then appeared to reconsider what she was about to say. “You won’t tell me even if I ask, will you?” 

 

His grin widened. “No.”

 

Phanan slid his chair sideways, coming to a stop at a small tabletop computer terminal. “I thought you’d have learned by now, Shalla,” he said, tapping rapidly at the keys, “when it comes to our noble Commander, there’s always another way to find out what you need to know.”

 

From the terminal speakers, the slightly fussy, metallic voice of a protocol droid spoke, loudly and clearly. “Incoming vessel. Main Hangar. O-300 hours. Security Code Clearance: High Command. Specifications: Modified CEC Action VI transport. Registration: Federation of Independent Traders.”

 

Shalla stared at the terminal. “I know that ship,” She sounded a little unsettled. 

 

“I don’t,” said Phanan. “But I can make a guess.”

 

“It’s the _Wild Karrde,_ ” said Shalla. “Talon Karrde is coming to Blackmoon.” 

 

 


	2. Moving Pieces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know original characters aren't always a great addition to a story, but this chapter introduces the first of several, and all of them play vital but non-central roles in this story. 
> 
> Again, thanks for reading, and feedback is always welcome.

 

It was always cold at her station.

 

Not excessively. Never excessively. Just enough to keep her constantly huddled into her coveralls and coat - which had, after all, been designed to protect against chemical burns and fire and not as insulators - just enough that the dull pain between her shoulderblades never quite went away. 

 

She barely remembered the sweltering humidity of her home world, but she was still a child of the sand and heat and sea, and she knew she would always be susceptible to cold.   

 

The medical bay of the NR base was, in nearly every other respect, an undoubted step up from the dank windowless laboratories of Obroa-Skai's underbelly that she had spent a year practically living in, leaving only to eat and sleep in quarters that were, to all intents and purposes, simply other laboratories with narrow bunks and bare metal tables installed in place of workbenches. Blackmoon’s medical centre was large and airy, with large transparisteel windows looking out onto the greenery beyond. She had never seen the greenery except through the windows; going outside would have meant getting time off, and that was not a luxury she was ever allowed.      

 

“Imani!” 

 

She suppressed the reflexive clench of her fingers; the delicate apparatus she was working on required very little pressure to shatter and would have cost more credits than she could expect to see in a year to replace. 

 

“Yes, Doctor?” Her voice, as ever, betrayed no emotion. They never used her first name, or her title. They would never refer to her as ‘Dr. Imani.’ It would have meant acknowledging her as an equal. 

 

It was the head of the Consortium deputation this time, a high honour: ordinarily, she was only ever berated by his subordinates. Even here in the laboratory, surrounded by samples of blood and tumorous tissue and chemicals of near-lethal toxicity, he, like the others, wore ceremonial robes. His were the same bleached-bone colour as his skin, immaculately pressed and adorned with a clinking assortment of honorific seals and medallions on a blood-red sash.   

 

“Your progress reports, Imani.” 

 

“What about them, Doctor?” She kept her eyes on her work, as though the inscribed figures on her burette were of vital importance. She did not want to look at him, with his wrinkled skin and knife-slash mouth and watery, contemptuous eyes. 

 

“They are dismal. Utterly dismal.” He had a voice like shattering stone, thin and harsh and cold with a hideous whine in the undertone. 

 

“My apologies, Doctor.”

 

“Your apologies are of no value to me, or to the Consortium. You will improve.” 

 

There was no point answering. He didn’t want an answer. They never did. It was a performance she repeated every day, often multiple times, and the whole thing had become just another a part of her work routine. She almost wanted to tell them that they need not bother with the theatre of power assertion. She knew she could not retort or retaliate or leave. 

 

There was nowhere to go. 

 

So she nodded, mechanically, as she always did, and heard the rustle of stiff fine brocade as he shuffled away.    

  

“My name is Kyah,” she whispered aloud, to no-one. 

 

Sometimes it felt as though if she did not say it, the person she was, the person who was more than a beaten-down drone for the Galactic Research Consortium, the woman who had lived and breathed and worked for a cause she believed in, the person she had not been for years, would vanish entirely.

 

A cleaner droid swept past, tweetling melodiously to itself, and she realised how late it actually was. Her shift had been over for nearly an hour, but she rarely noticed the time these days. The rules of the medical centre - set by its ranking medical officer - required her to have breaks, but she had learned that day that Blackmoon’s rules only applied when Blackmoon officers were there to see them enforced. The Consortium did not see fit to grant her breaks. The brief half-hour spent at the lounge had not been worth the consequences when she had been summoned back. 

 

She had not cried, though. She’d barely blinked. She never let them see her emotions; she had not for years. Perversely, she knew the more she resisted providing them with an emotional response, the worse they treated her. It didn’t matter. Agency over so many things in her life had been stripped away from her; she would not relinquish this.    

 

Mechanically she gathered up her things to leave. She was exhausted; she was nearly always exhausted. She wasn’t hungry, but she’d eat because she knew she had to, and sleep for a few restless hours like she did every night. And then she would come back to her workbench, and move through another day. 

 

Kyah was used to silent hallways when she left the medcentre, by a service entrance that only cleaner droids seemed to use apart from her. Her small, spartan quarters were just steps away: a single room and refresher, perfectly serviceable, with no concessions to luxury or comfort. As befitted her status. The only thing it contained that was not strictly utilitarian was a small box of chocolates that had been a passing gift from Blackmoon’s Chief Medical Officer to commemorate a holiday Kyah had never heard of. Every worker in the medical centre had received a trinket of some kind that day, and it was the first taste of luxury she had had in a long while. She had been eating them slowly, to make them last, but even so there were only a few left.

 

The noise hit her the second the service doors hissed open, magnified in the empty echoing space of the hallway and even more arresting for how entirely out of place it was. Loud curses in Basic and several other languages rose above a chorus of snarling, screeching calls; visceral bellows of pure animal rage. Kyah could not see any of the beings making the noises, and she did not recognize the voices, but she knew those calls.   

 

Memories came rushing back of another time and place, when she had been Dr. Kyah Imani, not a lab analyst, but a xenobiologist of recognised skill. She had never been to the world those animals belonged on, but she had known some all the same, and she had been, to her knowledge, one of the only researchers in the galaxy to have spent any significant time studying them. They were large and aggressive and unpredictable, but she had been drawn almost immediately to their sleek, dangerous beauty, and she had loved the three specimens she had worked with beyond all reason and sense, completely unable to maintain the scientific detachment she knew she should.   

 

She had not heard calls like that for many years, but she was certain she was not wrong. 

 

“Vornskrs,” she whispered. “Myrkyr vornskrs.” 

 

Without thinking she started to move down the hallway toward the source of the calls, and as the noise grew louder and closer she made herself slow down, realising she had broken into almost a full run. At the final corner she stopped, and peered cautiously around the edge.

 

They were two of them, fully-grown male vornskrs, midnight-black and beautiful, and she felt her heart leap at the sight. The sheer volume of their screams had made her fear they were being mistreated, but they looked more annoyed than angry, and utterly unafraid. Their tails were unnaturally short, but apart from that they were in superb condition, all rippling muscle under their glossy coats. Each had a tooled leather collar around its neck, to which were attached long leashes held by an irritated-looking human male. He, along with two others, were attempting to chivvy the vornskrs into a room from which the doors had been removed and replaced with a portcullis-like gate. From the look of it, they were resisting out of pure pique, in part perhaps because it was clearly apparent to Kyah that none of the three men really knew how to handle them. She wanted with every fibre of her being to offer help, but she stayed where she was, careful to keep herself hidden. She had no idea why captive vornskrs would be on a New Republic base, but she didn’t want to think about the consequences if the Consortium found out she had interfered.    

 

With a final volley of snarls, the vornskrs backed through the doorway. Immediately, one of the men hit a button on a control panel and the gate came crashing down. The larger of the pair spat disgustedly and sat down, licking a front paw where the fur had been rumpled in the scuffle.

 

“Seven hells,” grunted one of the men. “I don’t know how Chin deals with these bastards, I really don’t.”

 

“You’d better hope he’s back on his feet by the time the hull repairs are done, or it’s us that’ll have to get them back out of here too,” his partner retorted.

 

“I’m not doing it,” the first man said, with feeling. “I’ll pay Aves. I’ll blackmail him if I have to.”

 

They were still talking as they disappeared out of sight down the opposite hallway, but Kyah was no longer listening. She could not take her eyes off the vornskrs. Both of them had taken up sentry-like positions against the grating of the door, looking out with a mixture of resentment and curiosity.   

 

And then they saw her. 

 

She didn’t know if they had heard her, seen her, or sensed her first, but however they had detected her presence, they were both staring directly at her, their huge yellow eyes gleaming with interest. Her study specimens of many years before had often looked at her in a way that clearly conveyed their opinion of her as aggravatingly unobtainable prey, but that was not how the pair beyond the grate were looking at her now. The larger of the two put his head on one side and let out an interrogative hiss; his partner whickered quietly, a surprisingly gentle sound, and pawed lightly at the grate.    

 

It was like being caught in a tractor beam. She had just enough presence of mind to look carefully around her, and just enough self-restraint to wait a full minute listening for anyone nearby, before she slipped out of her corner and went to them.

 

They stood up as she came to the grate, letting out that peculiar cackling purr that she remembered so well. Hesitantly, for she knew better than most how powerful their sharp carnassine teeth were, she placed her hand against the grille. 

 

The larger of the two shouldered his partner out of the way and pressed his head up against her fingers. Kyah let out a noise that was halfway between a laugh and a sob and scratched his glossy fur, feeling the tears start as he purred even louder.   

 

“By the Force,” she whispered. “Who are you, hm? What are you doing here?” 

 

The only response was an indignant rumble as the smaller vornskr, pressing his own head to the grate, demanded his share of attention. She giggled through her tears, and rubbed behind his ears, drawing a deafeningly loud purr.

 

She might have stayed with them forever, but the sound of her hated, shrilling commlink broke through her reverie. For one wild moment she considered ignoring it, but she knew she couldn’t. She pulled it out and looked at the screen.

 

It was not, as she had expected, one of the Consortium. It wasn’t even a person. Just a recorded message, scrolling in large red letters across the screen, informing her that the wing she was in was off-limits to all personnel due to maintenance.

 

 _Maintenance_ , she thought with a snort, looking at the two giant predators purring contentedly on the other side of the grate. 

 

It was unlikely, she thought, that there were many people receiving that message. Her little room was in an otherwise empty corridor, and the remoteness of this particular corner of the base was probably precisely why it had been chosen to house the vornskrs. Again, she considered just ignoring it, and staying right where she was, but almost immediately rationality reasserted itself. There might be guards. There would certainly be droids, or surveillance cams. There was no way she could stay there undetected. 

 

With one final longing look at the vornskrs, Kyah turned away. 

 

Back in her quarters, she could not sleep. Why were they there? There was no even remotely credible explanation she could come up with for why two obviously tame vornskrs would suddenly appear in a remote corner of a Republic base. Suddenly, the tiny space that she had become accustomed to seemed unbearably claustrophobic. 

 

On impulse, she snatched up a jacket and pulled on her boots. She needed to walk. 

 

It took every fragment of self-control she possessed to avoid the passage leading to the vornskr pen. But she made herself walk in the opposite direction, to a part of the base she had never been before.     

 

She was so used to the relative isolation of the medcentre wing that it was almost a shock to be reminded of how populous Blackmoon base really was. As she moved further and further away from her quarters, more and more beings appeared: mechanics in grease-stained coveralls, uniformed beings with the old Rebel Alliance starbird emblem sewn into jackets or on the breast pocket of coveralls. She caught fragments of conversations, banal everyday talk of work shifts and love lives and malfunctioning equipment, and here and there names she knew from the Holonet - names that, she reminded herself, had real meaning here, the homebase of the legendary Rogue Squadron, among others. Not that she had ever seen them, or would necessarily know if she had, she thought wryly. Many of the lower-ranking medical staff adored the dashing, hologenic pilots of Starfighter Command and talked about them constantly, but Kyah was in her thirties now, and such starry-eyed hero-worship was firmly in her past.   

 

“It’s _him_ , it’s him, I swear it’s him.” A young Ithorian, her eyes bulging even more than usual, was saying to her friends as Kyah passed. She glanced perfunctorily in the direction they were looking at to see who ‘him’ might be, and saw a tall and admittedly attractive human, wearing fatigues with a crest that even she recognised. _Rogue Squadron_.

 

“Corran Horn,” the Ithorian whispered almost reverentially. “It’s actually him. I wonder, if I just…”

 

“He’s _married_ , Izi,” one of her group said, with a hint of exasperation. “Stop staring.”

 

“But he’s so _gorgeous.._ ”

 

She left them behind, still chattering. The handsome pilot seemed to notice neither them nor her; he looked preoccupied, almost troubled. 

 

A group of equally young humans raced past, chattering about fighters. “It’s _actually here…_ can you _imagine_ someone like him still using the same one after all these years…it’s an _X-wing,_ they’re obsolete in _weeks_ …”

 

Kyah shut out the conversations, letting all the voices wash around her in one large meaningless hum. All at once the noise started to bother her; she could feel the beginnings of a headache, and the ever-present ache between her shoulders began to reassert itself. She sighed.     

 

There were vornskrs on base, and legendary pilots, but none of that would change the fact that her work shift would begin in a matter of hours. 

 

“Time to go back,” she muttered to herself. A lack of sleep would mean more mistakes on the morrow, and even if she had nothing else left, she could still take pride in work well done, no matter how menial. 

 

The passage was both quiet and dark when she returned to her quarters. She rarely slept well. That night she fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, and dreamed troubled dreams filled with screams and blood and darkness that she would not remember on waking.  

 


	3. Complications

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's never simple when Jedi are involved.

Exactly 6 standard hours after speaking to his pilots in the Park, Face Loran walked into the cavernous main hangar that housed the fighters of all four Elite squadrons, his own included, and was almost immediately siezed with the intense desire to turn around and walk back out again. Instead, he squared his shoulders and ploughed determinedly forward, directly into the small but painfully loud crowd of young beings that he - and, indeed, most qualified pilots - ordinarily did their best to avoid. 

 

Cadets. 

 

There were less than 20 of them in the group, but they were somehow managing to make more noise than the entire crew of mechanics working on Nova squadron’s B-wings immediately behind them. They were directly between Face and where the cluster of X-wings sat, under the watchful eye of the Rogues’ chief mechanic Koyi Komad. Behind him, actually sitting on an S-foil of Face’s own X-wing, was the Wraiths’ chief mechanic, Cubber Daine, who was glaring at the group of cadets as though he were deciding which piece of the fighter’s fuselage he should tear off to throw at them. The rest of the Wraiths had assembled beneath, and Face could see Phanan’s pained expression, as well as the fragments of fabric Runt Ekwesh had stuffed into his large, hypersensitive ears.    

    

“Evening, Lieutenant,” Koyi Komad said, without taking her eyes off the cadets, who were edging dangerously close to the oldest and most battered of the X-wings. The tips of her lekku twitched, the only outward indication of her agitation, and Face realised that, although the two of them knew whose fighters those were, several of the cadets clearly did not. 

 

Five or six cadets had wandered in directly after Face, and one of them, a tall skinny human with spiky hair of such a violent yellow that Face knew it had to have been dyed, wandered under the foil of the closest fighter. It was a venerable old ship that had clearly been repainted and patched so often that it was questionable how much of the original structure still remained. Before either Komad or Face could do anything to stop him, the boy jumped up and grabbed the edge of a wing, swinging off it for a moment before dropping back to the ground with a wide, inane grin at his own daring.

 

“Cadet.” Komad’s voice was even, but her fists were clenched and her lekku trembled violently. “You will keep away from the fighters.”   

 

The rest of the group broke into a chorus of exaggerated “Oooooh!”s and sniggers, nudging and elbowing each other. The cadet still standing under the wing grinned again. “I’m sorry, Officer, you mean…don’t do this again?” And he repeated the motion, swinging more vigorously before letting go. Face started forward, but Komad, who had seen what Face had not, laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. 

 

One of the cadet’s friends, who appeared to have realised something, darted forward to grab his arm and tried to whisper into his ear, but was roughly shaken off.

  

The blue and white astromech droid, still mounted behind the cockpit, whom none of them had previously noticed, let forth a volley of indignant beeps and whistles. 

 

Several more cadets were backing away slowly, the same look of abrupt realisation blooming on their faces. The yellow-haired human, however, stood his ground, staring at his friends in some annoyance. 

 

“Why’s everyone being so weird?” he demanded. “It’s just a beat-up old X-wing. It wasn’t even here yesterday.”

 

“I’ll tell you one last time, shit-for-brains,” Komad said patiently. “Get the fuck away from the fighter.”

 

“Or what? You gonna report me?” He grinned obnoxiously and reached up as though to grab the wing yet again. 

 

“Won’t need to,” said a dry, ominously familiar voice from behind them all. Someone dropped a spanner, the clanging of metal on metal loud in the dead silence that fell as the cadets sprang to attention. 

 

Hobbie Klivian was leaning against a strut of his own X-wing, wiping grease from his hands with a rag. “We’ll just let you explain one-on-one to Jedi Master Skywalker why you felt the need to use his personal fighter as a climbing frame.”   

 

The yellow-haired cadet stared, mouth falling open, his face turning a sickly shade of green. “What - oh, _fuck._ I mean, I’m sorry, Major Klivian. Very sorry.” 

 

“You might want to learn to read callsigns. Comes in handy in our line of work. And read up on some history, which is just generally useful.” 

 

Corran Horn had appeared at another fighter’s nose with a Jedi’s disconcerting suddenness, running a hand lightly over the scarred paintwork. The eyes of several cadets went directly to the lightsaber dangling from his belt. “Hey, Koyi. These the new kids?”

 

The Twi’lek officer nodded. “That they are.”

 

“If I were you I’d stress the importance of not fucking around in the hangar bay over the next couple of days.” 

 

Daine snorted from his perch. “If you can use them Force tricks to get it through their thick skulls, you can do it. We’re about done trying. Guessing she’s ahead of schedule?”

 

“Got it in one.” 

 

“Problems?”

 

Corran made a face. “You could say that. Details are classified for the moment until we hear otherwise.”

 

“Less I know the better,” he grunted. “That girl gives me the willies.” 

 

“She’s hardly a girl,” Hobbie pointed out. “And she’s not that bad. As long as you don’t cross her. Anyway,” he added, suddenly grim, “You might not be seeing much of her.”

 

“Haven’t seen the Commander either, come to that. I know he doesn’t go by that no more.”

 

“That’s because he’s not here at the moment,” Corran said. 

 

Daine raised an eyebrow. “How’d the fighter get here?”

 

“He flew it in.” 

 

“How’d he leave? We haven’t cleared any outbounds since it got here.”

 

“He didn’t leave,” Corran said. “He flew the fighter in. He just wasn’t in it at the time.”

 

Daine snorted. “That’s a lie. Or a really bad joke.”

 

Face glanced at the other Wraiths, and saw his own incredulity mirrored in their faces. You couldn’t fly an X-wing through hyperspace from outside the cockpit. There was just no way.   

 

“An X-wing couldn’t make it here and dock with a remote or a droid,” Daine said, adamantly. “Can’t be done.”

 

“He didn’t use a remote,” Corran said patiently. “Or a droid. Though R2 helped, of course.” A proud beep-whistle of assent floated down from the little astromech atop the fighter.  

 

“Then what - ” Daine broke off as realisation dawned. “That can’t be,” he murmured faintly. “That’s…not _possible_. Even if he could do something like that, why in seven hells would he?” 

 

A long pause.

 

“He had to stay with her,” Corran said finally. 

 

A ripple of murmurs rose from the cadets and mechanics, quickly stilled as Hobbie whipped his head around to frown at them.  

 

“I don’t have any more answers to give you,” Corran said, raising his voice. “Cubber, what you need to know is this: you’re getting another guest. A SoroSuub PLY 3000.” Another outburst of excited chatter broke out, quelled again in an instant by Hobbie’s glare. “It’s sustained heavy fire damage, but your crew’s restricted to emergency external repairs only. You’re also sweeping. Trackers, bugs, anything that shouldn’t be there. Cadets will assist, order of Deck Officer Ventress. I’ll say it again, for all of you: exteriors only. No-one sets foot inside that ship except her own pilots. That’s an order from High Command, and there will be a High Command overseer.” 

 

Daine had gone slightly white, though Face noticed that the usually stoic Koyi Komad was visibly suppressing a smile. “High command?”

 

“Do you need me to spell it out?”

 

He swallowed. “No. No sir. How long do we have?”

 

“We’re going to Code Black at 1200. That’s the earliest possibility. Their communications have been compromised, and we won’t get another transmission from them until they’re out of hyperspace. There’s going to be a medical team in here, so stay out of their way. Unless something comes down those ramps shooting, medics have first contact.” He paused, looking at the agog faces of the cadets. “Stay out of the way. Do your work. Keep in mind that you’re under Code Black protocol, which means that if I hear talk later about anything that happens at this docking, there will be all seven hells to pay. Am I clear?” 

 

A chorus of mumbled affirmatives responded. Most looked stunned; some of the younger cadets, including the yellow-haired human boy, looked plainly terrified.

 

“That’s all I have for you right now. Cubber, you’ve got your orders. Make sure you’re ready. Wraiths, with me. Now.”

 

They fell into step behind him, no-one daring to speak. Outside the hangar bay, instead of making for the standard briefing room, as he might have done, Corran walked over to a patch of bare wall that formed the dead end of a hallway. He placed his right hand on the wall, and, with a soft beep, a glowing silver outline formed around it. A loud hiss sounded, and the wall lifted itself up, disappearing neatly into the ceiling.

 

“Inside,” he said. “Find a seat.” 

 

They filed cautiously, one by one, into what turned out to be short tunnel opening on to a huge, perfectly circular room, its walls lined with identical closed doors. In the centre of the room was a white plinth, surrounded by a C-shaped table set with a dozen or so deep, high-backed chairs, one of which was already occupied by Wes Janson. On the wall in front of them a screen flickered to life, resolving itself into the visibly tired face of General Wedge Antilles.  

 

“Welcome to Level 1 security,” he began, without preamble. “I think it’s only fair to warn you that you’re now under Level 1 surveillance, so think extremely carefully before you decide to say something, it’ll be recorded for the ages from 8 angles and in steroscopic sound.”  

 

Janson let out a sound that was equal parts cough, snort and laugh. Wedge ignored him. 

 

“As you may have guessed, you have the _Jade’s Fire_ incoming,” he said. “Master Trader Mara Jade is on board, and she is injured, though, fortunately, not severely.”

 

Several of the Wraiths glanced at Corran, who smirked.

 

“You did it, didn’t you?” Janson said. 

 

“Of course I did.” 

 

Phanan laughed softly under his breath, just loud enough for Face to hear, and realisation dawned. “You were…messing with the cadets.” 

 

“And Cubber,” Corran added with satisfaction, as Wedge sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose hard with one hand. “I owe him for some appalling paintwork to Mirax’s _Skate_ last year. She won’t have time to get her own back for months yet with how busy she is, so I did it for her.” 

 

“So…that part about Master Skywalker and his X-wing?” Tyria asked.  

 

“Oh, that was true,” said Corran. He saw the looks on their faces, and shrugged. “Master Jedi,” he said, as though that were sufficient explanation.  

 

“What’s wrong with the ship?” Kell’s interests, as ever, were primarily mechanical. 

 

“I’m not sure,” Corran admitted. “She’s got no hyperspace transmission capability left, so she was hit pretty hard. I wasn’t making that part up.”

 

“We’re not sure entirely what happened,” Wedge said. “What we do know is this: “Mara - Master Trader Jade - does not, as you may know, work for the Republic. Officially, she’s been on a trade mission for her employer, Talon Karrde. Unofficially, things have been a little more…complicated.”

 

He caught Janson’s expression out of the corner of his eye, and knew it was only the seriousness of the day’s events that was keeping him from making a crack about complications and Mara Jade.

 

“I’d hoped to have this briefing with Captain Karrde present, but the attack on the _Jade’s Fire_ wasn’t the only wrinkle that’s cropped up over the last few hours, so he’s preoccupied for the moment.”  

 

“One of his crew was poisoned,” Corran said shortly. “Not fatally, but not far off from it.” 

  

“How in seven hells does someone poison a member of Talon Karrde’s crew?” Donos asked incredulously. “I thought you couldn’t drop a credit anywhere Karrde’s ever taken even a passing interest in without him knowing about it.”

 

“You can’t,” Wedge said, heavily. “Which is just one of the reasons this entire situation is turning out to be far more complicated than we’d imagined.”

 

“Does this have anything to do with why you’re on Tatooine, General?” asked Shalla. “We had…well, we’d wondered.” She hadn’t quite succeeded in keeping the distaste out of her voice, and shot an apologetic glance at Falynn.

 

“It does. No offense, Sandskimmer, but it’s not an assignment I would have chosen.”

 

“Why does everyone assume I’ll be upset if they insult Tatooine around me?” Falynn demanded. “I _left_ , didn’t I?”

 

“Fair point,” Janson said with a grin. “Luke still gets touchy though. Sometimes.” 

 

“So where are we now?” Shalla asked, practically. 

 

“Waiting,” Wedge admitted. “We don’t know yet what happened to the _Jade’s Fire_ , and Karrde will tell us what he knows as soon as his crewman and Mara - Master Trader Jade - are definitely out of danger. We’re reasonably certain she will be back to normal very soon, but Chin - from the _Wild Karrde_ \- might be a different story. According to Dr. Kest, he is stable, but very weak, and there’s the small matter of not knowing what he was poisoned with or how.” 

 

Phanan raised a hand. “Do I have clearance to consult with Seldes on this?” he asked. “I can’t promise I can help, but it’s always possible.”

 

“Granted,” Wedge said. “Dr. Kest, the Gods love her, has an ability to tolerate you that borders on the saintly, so I don’t even feel guilty for saying that.” Phanan grinned. “As for the rest of you, you’re on ice for the time being. Once the _Fire_ has landed and Master Trader Jade has had medical attention, Lieutenant Horn will arrange another briefing.”   

 

“I would do it, but she likes you better than me,” Janson said. 

 

“Mara’s a friend,” was all Corran said, and the levity had gone from his voice. 

 

“Questions?” asked Wedge. There were none. “Right. Dismissed. Have your commlinks handy and stay alert. I’m ordering the hangar cleared when the _Fire_ arrives. If you happen to be there, keep your distance. Cadets and Cubber’s crew can move in once Mara’s safely in the medcentre, I doubt she’ll take too well to having a mob of kids gawping at her when she gets off the ship.”

 

“Good plan,” Corran murmured, and Janson laughed again. Dia Passik was looking at him with mild disapproval, and he protested, “It’s not what you think, Dia. I don’t enjoy the thought of other people’s pain. That’s Major Klivian you’re thinking of.”

 

Dia rolled her eyes and swept past him to the door. Janson caught Face’s eye and winked.

 

She was waiting for him outside, the look of disapproval softening when she saw him. He took her hand, and they walked together to the wing that housed the Wraiths’ quarters. 

 

“I have a bad feeling about this,” she said softly.

 

“Me, too,” Face admitted. He was not Force-sensitive, and neither was she, but a mission that began with an injured Jedi and a posioned crewman on one of the most secure ships in the galaxy was not one he was especially looking forward to.  

 

“How many of them do you think are going to make sure they’re in the hangar at 1200?” she asked, motioning over his shoulder. 

 

“All except Phanan, and he’d be there too if it wasn’t past his bedtime,” he replied acerbically, and she laughed. 

 

“Come on, Lieutenant,” she said teasingly. “We’d better get some sleep if you’re going to join your squadron on the welcome guard.” 

 

Face smiled, and made no protest as she led him down the passage to the rooms they shared. 

 

 


	4. Legends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter Jedi.  
> And, Talon Karrde plays dejarik...of a sort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longest chapter so far; I decided to combine a few of what would have been very short ones.
> 
> Grateful for those who have left kudos and comments, and I'm glad that the secondary/tertiary character POV seems to be working out.

Something odd was happening on Blackmoon Base.

 

Even in her isolated corner of the medcentre, Kyah knew it. Almost no-one usually spoke to her except the Cosortium deputation members, aside from casual pleasantries in passing, but from the moment she had arrived for her shift in the early hours of the morning she had known. The atmosphere was charged with a new sense of urgency; staff who ordinarily drifted unhurriedly from task to task darted around purposefully, unsmiling and speaking only in low murmurs. From what she had managed to overhear, she knew that new patients had been installed in treatment rooms, and were evidently of some importance as nearly every aspect of their presence was classified. No-one would say their names, or even what they were being treated for, not even the most garrulous of nurses who routinely discussed the goriest and most intimate details of their patients’ conditions over mugs of caf without the slightest restraint.   

 

Even the Chief Medical Officer, the ordinarily serene and unflappable Dr. Kest, had been preoccupied enough to politely but firmly refuse Kyah’s superiors an audience that day - an event worthy of comment, as she had been unfailingly courteous to them for the entirely of their visit thus far. Angry and resentful, they had, as usual, taken their frustrations out on Kyah, and as the hours wore on her hands had begun to shake and the insides of her cheeks grew raw from biting down on them to stop her tears. 

 

When, finally, they departed in a swirl of silks and brocades and insulted pride, she slumped over her workbench and closed her eyes. 

 

She had thought she would cry, but she could not seem to work up the energy even for that. 

 

When she looked up, her own workroom was empty - it almost always was - but, unusally, so was the enormous main laboratory beyond, visible through another of the floor-to-ceiling transparisteel windows Blackmoon had in such abundance. 

 

Kyah reached into her satchel, fumbling for the supply of stimpills she relied on to get her through most of her workdays. They would not allow her sedatives to help her sleep - she had requested them many times - but she was allowed as many stimulants as she wanted. Her productivity, she reflected dully, was, of course, worth more than her need to rest. 

 

They were not there. She emptied the contents of the bag onto the bench, sifting through sample jars and other debris, and swore under her breath. The pills were definitely missing. 

 

She could have taken some from the supply station in the medcentre itself, but she needed a droid to process the request and retrieve them for her - she was not a staff member and had no dispensing privileges of her own. And the laboratory was well and truly empty - almost eerily so. It was rarely busy, but she had never seen it like this. There was not a single staff member or droid in sight.

 

Reluctantly, she rose. There was nothing for it. She’d have to go back to her rooms and search. There was no way that she would be able to get through the mountain of work she had been assigned without them. If she could not find her own supply, she’d have to hunt down a droid or one of Dr. Kest’s nurses and ask for more. 

 

In the corridor, she hesitated for a long moment. It was, as usual, entirely empty. 

 

The vornskr pen was just steps away. 

 

She knew she shouldn’t. If she were discovered there…incurring the wrath of the Consortium was one thing, but the area was off-limits. Trespassing would mean breaking Republic security protocol, and that might well be grounds for dismissing her from the base entirely.  

 

She had barely taken the first step towards her room door when she heard the sound.

 

It was odd, rhythmic scrabbling sound, mixed with heavy footfalls and a clatter too light to be boots and not regular enough to be a droid. Confused, she looked back down the corridor.

 

And then a loud, unmistakeable cackle-hiss echoed off the walls, so loud that it seemed to have come from right around the nearest bend, and Kyah began to run, throwing all caution to the wind. 

 

Dread mounted in the pit of her stomach as the noises filled the hallway, distorted and echoing off the curved metal walls. She rounded the final corner at a full sprint, skidded to a halt, and gasped in dismay.

 

The porcullis gate of the vornskr’s makeshit pen hung lopsidedly off its mountings, only blocking a small corner of the doorway. On the wall beside it, the control panel sparked erratically, hissing and belching small clouds of thick black smoke. 

 

The room beyond was empty. 

 

Two lengths of reinforced leather hung from hooks on the wall, each with a retractable metal ring-snap at the end: the leashes she had seen attached to their collars when the vornskrs had been brought there. Reflexively, she snatched them off the wall and dashed back out, racing down the corridor in the opposite direction - the only way they could have gone. She could still hear them, but the sounds were growing rapidly fainter. On she went, passing sealed doors and empty bays; nowhere two enormous restless quadrupeds could have hidden.  

 

After what seemed like hours, when her legs were beginning to hurt and she knew she would need to stop to catch her breath, the passage she had been following ended, abruptly, in a blank wall. 

 

“Oh no,” Kyah murmured. 

 

She looked around wildly. The section of passageway she was standing in was obviously rarely used; old crates and tarpaulin-covered piles lay carelessly pushed against the walls or heaped on the floor, most covered in a thick layer of dust. She had passed no doors for some time, only metal grilles set high into the walls that presumably led to maintenance ducts. Most were screwed firmly into place, but a few had slats that were broken or missing, leaving openings that might - possibly? - be wide enough for a fairly large animal to slip through. 

 

But agile though vornskrs were, she did not think that even they were capable of getting to the grates, which were just below the level of the ceiling, at least twenty metres off the floor.

 

As she was staring at one particularly precarious heap of crates, wondering if the vornskrs had somehow managed to climb the stack to reach an open duct, she saw it. A heavy bay door, so large that it looked almost exactly like a section of wall, and hidden almost entirely behind piles of equipment, but it was a door. And it was open - not entirely, but wide enough.

 

Kyah sighed, and looked down at the leashes she had almost forgotten she was still holding. Each had a small metal disc attached to it, just before the ring clip that fastened it to a collar. She hadn’t noticed them before. There were letters etched into them in neat Basic, a single word on each disc. 

 

“'Sturm and Drang',” Kyah read aloud, and frowned. Why were those words familiar?   

 

“Oh my good Gods,” she breathed, feeling almost faint. Sturm and Drang. Captive vornskrs. Vornskrs belonging to perhaps the only being in the galaxy who took his pets with him almost everywhere he went. How in seven hells had she not realised it sooner?

 

The sensible thing to do, she reflected, would be to go straight back to her quarters. Return the leashes to the empty pen, assume that the search party that would surely be sent after the vornskrs would find them and return them safely to their master. She could not afford to get into trouble, and where these pets were concerned, trouble would not be hard to come by.

 

Unbidden, a vision of the rough, reluctant men she had seen trying to usher the vornskrs into their pen rose to mind and she shivered. How would they recapture them? Would they try to dart them - or stun them? And then another, far worse, thought occurred to her, and it made her blood run cold.

 

They were on a military base. And as far as she knew, almost no-one - if anyone at all - had been told about the vornskr’s presence. They would have only to wander into the wrong chamber, filled with Republic personnel armed with blasters…

 

She made up her mind. Stuffing the leads into her bag, she dropped to all fours and examined the space beneath the door. It was large enough for her to slip under, but only just. Gathering her courage, she swung her legs under the rim and pushed herself through the gap.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When Face and Phanan entered the hangar - the third time they had done so in the previous 12 standard hours - it was wonderfully, blessedly quiet. The extremely subduded group of cadets, appropriately cowed by Corran’s earlier performance, had completed their tasks on the Jade’s Fire under the daunting glare of Officer Sia Ventress and Koyi Komad and slunk abashedly away to their quarters. They were not missed. Even the clanging of wrenches and hydrospanners, interspersed with heavily anatomical swearing, drifting across from Nova squadron's repair crew was almost musical by comparison.  

 

The other Wraiths and most of the pilots from Polearm and Nova squadrons were already there, admiring the ship - at a respectful distance, since a good number of its shields were still up. It was, by some margin, the most beautiful craft that had ever graced Blackmoon Base’s hangar, a sleek gleaming yacht with elegant lines and an intricate, detailed decal of subtle flickering flames rippling back from its nose against a backdrop of deep, rich green, so dark it was almost black. 

 

“Well?” Kell asked.

 

“We don’t know much,” Face said, pulling up a chair for himself. “Dorset, Todra and I got comms from Lieutenant Janson. Mara Jade is awake - more than awake, actually, she’s close to fully recovered, somehow.”

 

“Already?” said Tyria, startled. “Jedi healing?” 

 

“We can only assume,” said Phanan. “None of the medics have seen her except for Dr. Kest.”

 

“And we can expect another briefing in a few hours,” Face concluded. 

 

“Should we be here?” Shalla asked, nervously. “I mean, she may not want anyone near her ship. Though I guess they can’t see us.” 

 

“I don’t think they need to,” Face mused. 

 

She stared at him.

 

“She’s Jedi,” Phanan said, seating himself on a cart since all the chairs had been taken. “They can probably feel us. Sense us. Detect our presence through non-ocular means we mortals can’t understand. You get what I’m saying.”

 

She looked spooked. “That’s so weird.”

 

“Handy, though.”

 

“How old do you think he is?” Tyria asked suddenly. “Skywalker, I mean.”

 

“I’m sure it’s on record somewhere. And if it’s not, Leia Organa-Solo’s DOB certainly is.”

 

Piggy looked at him, confusion evident even on his heavy inexpressive features. “How is that relevant?” 

 

“They’re twins.”

 

“I did not know that. They do not look like twins.” He sounded skeptical. 

 

“Humans don’t have to look identical to be twins,” Kell said. 

 

“Unless they’re identical twins.”

 

“Thank you for clearing that up, Lieutenant Loran.”

 

“But since we don’t know,” Tyria persisted. “How old do you think he is? They are. Whatever.”

 

“He must be old,” Shalla said. “Like General Antilles. That old, I mean. Like 45?”

 

Phanan snorted. “The General is 37. Assuming his medical files are accurate. Falynn, you should know.”

 

She flushed. She never liked to be reminded of the ore hauler race she’d lost to Wedge Antilles, despite how long ago it had been, when she had taunted him about being past his prime with humiliating consequences. 

 

“Are _your_ medical files accurate?” Kell asked, interested. 

 

“Very possibly. I lose track myself, what with all the updating.”

 

“He does not look very old,” said Runt, whose multiple minds had evidently been giving the matter some thought. “We are not skilled at detecting human age through appearance, but he does not look very old to us. Councillor Organa-Solo neither.”

 

“I don’t think she’ll ever really look old,” Dia said, a little wistfully. “She’s so…luminous.”

 

“If the Commander is 37, Skywalker must be…older?” Maher said, uncertainly. 

 

Falynn shook her head. “Younger. I don’t know how much younger, but he is younger. General Antilles mentioned it once, that all of the original Rogue Squadron had seniority on the Princess in age but not rank.” 

 

“I’ll guess 33,” Kell said. 

 

“Why 33?” 

 

“Dunno. That’s why it was a guess.” 

 

“It’s hard,” Shalla said thoughtfully. “He looks much older in the holos. But yesterday in the bay…he didn’t look like that at all.” 

 

After all the tension leading up to the arrival of the _Jade’s Fire,_ the actual event had been almost anticlimactic. Almost. The beautiful yacht had eased into a near-perfect landing despite the damage she had sustained, in much worse condition than her owner, who had walked off unaided though visibly limping, with bloodstained bandages swathed around her head almost covering her beautiful auburn hair. Skywalker had seemed unhurt, but there were deep hollows beneath his cheekbones and almost purple shadows under his eyes; he had looked like a man very close to complete exhaustion, a far cry from the grave, immaculately robed hero of a million holos. Corran Horn, as protective as a parent, had ushered them both away to the medical bay. 

 

None of the Wraiths had seen them since.    

 

“30?” Dia ventured. 

 

“That’s too young,” Face said dismissively. “I don’t think they’d have let him fly the Death Star Run at Yavin if he wasn’t of age.” 

 

“I think Kell’s right,” Falynn said. “33 seems right. But Shalla’s got a point.”

 

Phanan sighed. “So are we agreed on this entirely pointless question?” 

 

Tyria made a face at him. “I just wondered, that’s all. I was thinking about how old he’d have been when he evaluated me all those years ago. Even then I couldn’t begin to guess.”

 

“Is it important to know?” Runt asked, in a slightly worried tone. “We cannot see how, but we do not know if such things are significant for Jedi.” 

 

“It’s not,” Tyria said. “I mean, I guess it might be for the Jedi, but I wouldn’t know about that.” She sounded a little sad, but not, Kell noted with some relief, bitter. He squeezed her hand and she leaned into his side, smiling at him. 

 

“So Kell wins,” Phanan said dryly. “Or he would if we had any way of checking if he’s right.” 

 

“I thought you said the Councillor’s information would be on file.”

 

“And so it is, if you want to hack through High Command encryption for top-level classified information. Or I suppose you could simply petition for an audience with her to ask how old she is.” 

 

“We do not think that would be wise,” Runt said earnestly. “Either course of action.” 

 

“You could well be right,” Phanan said, straight-faced. “So for the time being, Kell’s win is entirely nominal, which is just as well, since we have no prize to award him.” 

 

“I’d settle for a free drink.”

 

“Undoubtedly. I look forward to watching you explain to Squeaky at the Park why you deserve one.”

 

Whatever Kell might have been about to say in response was cut off by the loud _bleep_ of Face’s commlink. He flicked it on and looked at the words scrolling rapidly across the screen. 

 

“What is it?” asked Dia. “Briefing?”  

 

He nodded. “It’s from Lieutenant Janson. But it doesn’t make sense - not that that’s a surprise, really.” He read it again, more slowly, then frowned. “No, I have no idea. Briefing’s scheduled for the morning, but he says they need today for…fight club?” 

 

“That can’t be what it says.” Shalla held out a hand. “Give that here.”

 

“I know how to read,” Face said, exasperated. “That’s what it says.”

 

“He must have mistyped,” Falynn said, doubtfully, reading the text over Shalla’s shoulder.

 

Phanan yawned. “Fight club or no fight club, or whatever else the Jedi wish to pass their time with, this is an opportunity.”

 

“Let me guess,” Kell deadpanned. “To sleep?”

 

“But of course.” Phanan hopped delicately from his precarious seat on the rolling cart. “And I, for one, fully intend to take advantage of it.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Kyah didn’t know if she was in a room, a passageway, an air duct, or something else entirely. It was near pitch-black, and she had to edge forward, step by cautious step, skirting around piles of rubbish and feeling for sure footing. The deafening roar of rushing air through the ventilation shafts that seemed to be right above her head drowned out any other sound. 

 

 _Just keep going_ , she told herself, over and over again. _There’s light ahead_. There was: a tiny square of yellow light, growing steadily larger as she drew nearer.

 

It turned out to be, when she reached it, another partly-blocked and only half-opened doorway, a much smaller one than the first. It was so narrow that it must, she decided, have been constructed for maintenance droids, not as an actual entryway. Beyond was a vast room; she could only see a tiny corner of it, but it was clearly enormous, brightly-lit and walled in gleaming chrome metal. 

 

And there, padding across the floor, just metres away from her, were the vornskrs.

 

Kyah squeezed herself through the narrow gap and flung herself forward. “Here!” she called breathlessly. “Sturm! Drang!”

 

They barely checked as they leapt past her, completely ignoring her. Bewildered, she spun around, and almost screamed out loud.

 

Standing there was a fair-haired human, the planes and angles of his face thrown into sharp and terrifying relief for a moment by the eerie green glow of the weapon in his hand before, with a whining, crackling hiss, the blade vanished into its hilt and she could see him clearly. 

 

It was a face she had seen a million times, in holos and news reports, scrawled in graffiti and printed on the flimsy yet expensive parchment news used by the wealthy, who enjoyed painstakingly crafted replicas of archaic information media long since discarded as unsustainable for mass consumption. In many ways, it was as familiar as her own face in the mirror. 

 

She had never once thought she would ever see it in person. There were those who met Jedi, and there were people like her, and you could not be both of those things.    

 

In faded grey fatigues and a black undershirt that exposed his arms insead of the dark robes he was known for, the Jedi master of legend was far more physically formidable than she had ever seen him. On the other hand, he was of below-average height, with tousled nondescript sandy-gold hair - almost absurdly normal-looking. Except for his eyes. They were both mesmerizing and deeply disconcerting in a way she would never have been able to put into words; intense fathomless eyes that shifted between blue and grey, reminding her vividly of the sky at dusk during a lightning storm, the kind of sky she had only ever seen once as a very young child. A nameless shiver ran down her spine and she looked quickly away.

 

It was only then that she noticed the remotes suspended motionless in the air around him, a dense swarm of silver and black spheres. Training remotes. There were dozens of them, frozen into perfect immobility, and not the faintest trace could she see in his expression or stance of the effort he was expending to keep them there.

 

The handsome pilot she had seen the day before, Rogue Squadron’s Corran Horn, released his grip on the overhead bars he had been hanging from, executing a neat midair flip to land on his feet as lightly as though he had hopped down from the bottom rung of a ladder instead of negotiating a drop of nearly 50 metres. His lightsaber, which had been weaving through a maze of marked metal staves halfway across the enormous room, slicing them apart neatly and precisely along red painted lines, shut itself down and flew to his hand. There were two women beyond, on a set of mats, barefoot and dressed in black from neck to ankle: one tall and lithe with very pale skin and very dark hair, the other a small, slender redhead. Both wore their long hair braided up and held in place with almost incongruously fine pins, lacquered and jewel-studded, that seemed more appropriate for a ball than a combat training session, which was clearly what she had walked into.        

 

“I’m sorry to intrude,” Kyah blurted, feeling a flush of mortification creep up her neck, and an icy knot of pure fear constricting her chest. “They got loose, and no-one else was there, and I didn’t want them to get hurt, or damage anything…” 

 

Sturm and Drang, at that moment, looked decidedly neither in danger nor particularly dangerous. They were winding themselves adoringly around Skywalker’s legs, rubbing against his hands and hips, making extremely un-predator-like crooning noises. He scratched each behind an ear and they broke into delighted, rumbling purrs.  

 

The dark-haired woman spoke up sharply. “What do you mean, they got loose?” 

 

“I - I’m not sure how,” stammered Kyah, “but the lock on their pen short-circuited. I’m - I work in the medical bay, so I saw them.” 

 

“And you just decided to come after them?” There was disbelief in the redheaded woman’s voice, but she also sounded almost impressed.   

 

“I have their leads,” said Kyah, holding them out, not knowing what else to say. “I thought…”

 

“Did you think you would get them back yourself?” The tall woman raised an eyebrow at Kyah and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. The woman was lean and wiry, with an uncompromising set to her delicate features. Her eyes, almost as dark as Kyah’s own, were hunters’ eyes: alert and knowing and indefinably dangerous. “Are you armed? Who are you?”

 

Kyah drew herself up as straight as she could, gathering her courage. She had done nothing wrong, she reminded herself. “My name is Kyah Imani,” she said, relieved that her voice was more or less steady. “I’m a xenobiologist, I’m working with Dr. Kest. I know a little about carnassine predators. I didn’t want them to come to any harm,” she repeated. “Or do any damage. I took the leads in case I got a chance to get close enough to get them on. I don’t have a weapon. And if I did I wouldn’t use it on them.” 

 

“I saw you yesterday,” Skywalker said suddenly. “It was you, wasn’t it? You were talking to them through the bars.”

 

She nodded, but still couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She remembered how absolutely certain she’d been that there was no-one in sight when she’d gone to the vornskr pen and felt the cold fear in her gut intensify. “Yes. I - I like carnassines. They didn’t seem to mind having me there,” she added, a little defensively. 

 

“No, they didn’t.” Skywalker stroked the larger vornskr’s neck. “Go on, then, Drang,” he said to it, nodding at her.

 

Drang turned his head, appraising her for a moment with bright yellow eyes. Then, incredibly, he got to his feet and ambled over to her, pushing his head up under her hand as though asking to be petted. Willing her hands not to shake, she rubbed behind one pointed, tufty ear and quickly fastened the end of the lead to the collar around his neck. He made no protest, continuing to purr contentedly as she stroked him. The second vornskr followed; not as demonstrative as his partner, he sank down beside Kyah and licked her hand with a rough pink tongue. She clipped the second lead around his collar and once again met with no resistance; Sturm merely lifted a massive hindpaw and scratched his shoulder vigorously, then yawned, briefly baring rows of huge jagged carnassial teeth.       

 

“Not bad.” The dark-haired woman tossed her a small security card; startled, Kyah fumbled and very nearly dropped it. Drang let out a complaining bark, displeased at the cessation of attention to his ears. “That’s access to the _Wilde Karrde_ docking bay. I’ll tell them you’re coming.” 

 

“I…thank you.” Kyah hesitated. “Is this your access card? Won’t you need it?”

 

She smiled briefly at that. “Don’t worry about it.” She pulled a commlink from her belt and flicked it on. “Ghent?” she said into it. “It’s Shada.”

 

 _Shada. Shada d’ukal. Talon Karrde’s second-in-command, the former Mistryl Shadow Guard._ Kyah wished the floor would open and swallow her up. _Of course._ And in the same moment, even before she saw the lightsaber dangling from the redheaded woman’s gunbelt, she knew. 

 

“Right. Thank you. I’ll just…I’ll go now,” she mumbled, and without waiting for a response turned and fled towards the open bay doors at the far end of the room, the vornskrs loping easily after her. 

 

Behind her, she heard the snap-hiss of lightsabers springing to life, and the whirr of the remotes beginning to spin again before the enormous doors slid shut behind her.       

 

Once safely outside, she leaned against a bulkhead, trying to get her breathing return to normal. Sturm and Drang, apparently invigorated by their brief adventure, wagged their stumps of tails ingratiatingly at her and tugged at their leads with remarkable gentleness; she knew full well that they were large and strong enough to overpower her almost without effort if they chose to. Kyah realised she had no idea where the _Wild Karrde_ docking bay actually was, but the vornskrs sauntered ahead, seeming to know exactly where they were going, and it seemed safest just to follow them.    

 

To her relief, they met no-one on the way. Her head was buzzing with a combination of exhilaration, fear and pure adrenalin; she could not think straight. It seemed like both forever and no time at all before she was standing in front of what could only be the _Wild Karrde_ : a towering, hulking behemoth of a ship, battered and carbon-scarred and utterly forbidding-looking. 

 

A Berchestian with a tattooed head was leaning against a strut at the foot of the ramp. When he saw her he held out his hand wordlessly for the vornskrs’ leashes. 

 

“You’ll go with him,” he grunted, when she handed them over, jerking a thumb over his shoulder to where a squat grey droid waited, gazing at her with impassive, glowing eyes. “No weapons.”   

 

“I’m a medical tech,” she pointed out. “They don’t arm us.”

 

He did not looked convinced, but said nothing. 

 

“You will follow me,” the droid announced in its flat, grating tone. “At once.”

 

She did as she was told. 

 

It led her through the narrow passages of the ship, which was no less forbidding on the inside. Finally, it halted in front of a door and swiveled its dome-shaped head around, plugging an arm into the control terminal on the wall. A click and a beep, and the doors slid open. 

 

“Captain Karrde,” the droid announced, and waved her in.

 

Kyah’s first sense was one of profound cognitive dissonance. The room she was standing in seemed to have been teleported in - not merely from another ship, but from another world entirely. It resembled nothing so much as a luxurious living room belonging to someone with both wealth and not-inconsiderable taste. She knew nothing about carpets, but even so she knew instinctively that the one under her boots was probably worth more than she might expect to earn in an entire year. 

 

Lounging elegantly in a seat that looked like it belonged in a ship’s cockpit - and probably had been appropriated from one - was was one of the most imposing humans she had ever seen. The erstwhile smuggler chief was a huge, powerfully built man, with a square-jawed face that looked like it had been chiselled out of sandstone rock. On almost anyone else, his heavy silk midnight-blue tunic and black spacer’s jacket might have looked slightly ridiculous, but Talon Karrde wore them on his broad-shouldered frame with complete aplomb. Likewise, his meticulously groomed black beard and moustache and the long grey-streaked hair pulled into a knot at the back of his head did not have the fussy, vaguely dandified effect they might have on another man. He radiated power and sagacity and assurance in equal measure and Kyah was struck by the sudden certainty that he would be a terribly dangerous man to cross. 

 

Sitting at his feet was the larger of the two vornskrs. Drang. Kyah had no time to ponder the impossibility of his being there before Talon Karrde spoke.

 

“Dr. Imani, I presume.” His voice was a deep bass rumble, with a rich, urbane accent that she could not place.

 

“Yes.” He was not unnerving in the same way the Jedi were, but he was still decidedly intimidating. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

 

“Not at all.” He inclined his head with graceful courtesy. “Do have a seat. May I offer you a drink?”

 

Whatever else Kyah had been expecting, it was not that.

 

“Thank you. You’re very kind.” She lowered herself gingerly into the chair opposite him, an elaborate cobbled-together construction that looked more like a strange piece of sculpture than a seat. A second crewman brought over two glasses and a distinctive bottle of amber-gold liquor. Kyah stared at it disbelievingly. It surely wasn’t - it couldn’t be -

 

“Please forgive my rudeness, Doctor,” Karrde said. “I would have asked your preference, but I am not as well-stocked at the moment as I usually am, so our choices are somewhat limited. Does Whyren’s suit you?” 

 

“Yes,” Kyah managed, forbearing to tell him that she had never tasted Whyren’s - would never in a million years have been able to afford it on what she earned. He poured out two generous measures and handed her one of the glasses. 

 

The first sip of it nearly made her gasp; it was pure refined fire, smoky and heady and utterly exquisite. She caught sight of the amused glint in the big man’s eyes and quickly dropped her gaze to the tabletop, feeling her cheeks grow hot. To cover her embarrassment she took another sip and let her eyes fall shut briefly, savouring the incredible taste burning a trail down her throat.

 

“I am most grateful to you for bringing back my vornskrs.” Karrde stroked Drang’s head where it lay resting on his knee. “I am quite attached to them. I would have hated for them to have come to any harm. Nor would I have enjoyed compensating the Republic for the damage they would invariably have done if left to their own devices.”

 

“It was nothing,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t mind. They weren’t any trouble. They’re beautiful animals.” 

 

“They are indeed.” Drang, as though he knew he was being praised, let out a cackling purr, and Karrde smiled down at him indulgently. “Although this one, I fear, is incorrigibly vain.” 

 

Kyah laughed. Karrde’s gaze drifted back to her, his expression turning thoughtful. “It is…unusual for them to display such impeccable manners to strangers,” he said. “Very unusual indeed. Yet my associate Shada tells me they took to you as though they had known you for years.”        

 

“I don’t know why they did that. I - I did talk to them through the bars of their pen yesterday,” she admitted. 

 

Karrde raised an eyebrow. “Ah.”

 

“It’s…I’m not a true doctor - not really. I’m a xenobiologist. I have medical training, and I’m a decent analyst, but I worked with large carnivores for years, and I loved my work. I was good at it. When I saw your two, I couldn’t resist getting a closer look at them.” 

 

He was watching her carefully. His eyes were the colour of flint, shrewd and penetrating.

 

“I know I shouldn’t have,” she went on, the words tumbling out. “I had no right. But I did. And…they didn’t seem to mind me there. That was why I took the leads and went after them when I saw the gate open. I thought I might somehow be able to get the leads on before someone shot at them, or - or they got trapped somewhere.” She winced inwardly, knowing how incoherent she must sound. “I know it wasn’t the greatest plan.” 

 

There was a long moment’s silence. Kyah gulped at her drink - unwisely swallowing far too much of it at once - and just managed to suppress a spluttering cough. _At least I got a free Whyren’s out of all this_ , she thought dully. _I’ll be sent back to Obroa-skai and put on lab shifts for the rest of my life, but I did get that much._

 

“Might I ask something of a personal question, Doctor?” 

 

Kyah tensed, immediately wary. “What question is that?”   

 

“Why are you here? On Blackmoon Base?”

 

“I was assigned here,” she said, stiffly.

 

She could have told him everything - the whole, sordid, demeaning story. Why not? Who, after all, would be more discreet than he? She had been able to tell no-one, to confide in no-one, to ask advice from no-one. But then, what did Talon Karrde care for the problems of a lowly medical assistant? _This is dejarik,_ she thought. _Not a confessional. But why play this game with me?_

 

“I see,” he said.  

 

She waited.

 

Karrde took a sip of his own drink - draining it nearly halfway in the process, she noticed. He regarded her contemplatively for a moment over the rim of the glass, then straightened slightly in his chair. 

 

“Would I be correct in assuming that your current assignment is a long-term one?”

 

“You would.” Kyah felt a twinge of pain in her fingers and realised she had been gripping the edge of the seat so hard that her knuckles had turned white. She made herself let go, moving her hand to her lap instead.   

 

“In that case, I have a proposition for you. A request, if you will.”

 

“A request," she repeated. Talon Karrde was making a request. "Of me.” 

 

“Indeed.” Karrde glanced at Drang, who had curled up at his feet and gone to sleep. “You have already proven yourself eminently qualified for the task I have in mind.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was almost four hours later when Kyah finally left the hangar, having missed almost an entire shift of work at the medcentre. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, it did not matter. She felt almost lightheaded, giddy with joy and disbelief in equal measure.

 

Tucked safely into her jacket pocket were a datapad and access chip stamped with the dual insignia of the New Republic and the Federation of Independent Traders, and every few moments she reached for them reflexively, to run her fingers over the edges and reassure herself they were real. Her talismans. Her keys to freedom.  

 

For all practical purposes, of course, not much had changed. She was still a comparatively low-ranking medical officer, and her days would still be spent largely in the laboratory of Blackmoon’s medcentre, except she would no longer be there as a representative of the Galactic Research Consortium but as an independently contracted analyst, officially in the employ of the New Republic, and that made all the difference in the universe. Dr. Seldes Kest, the kindly Sullustan who ran Blackmoon’s medical facilities, had been visibly amused but also obviously slightly confused at Kyah’s barely-contained, wild delight when she had given her official consent to Karrde’s proposal, but Kyah knew she would never be able to explain. It was enough to be so suddenly and completely free of the Consortium; she would have to be content with that. 

 

And then, of course, there were her new side duties. 

 

She had been half-afraid that, once back with their master, the vornskrs’ inexplicable affection for her would abate, but when it was time to take Drang back to the pair’s temporary holding room in the _Wild Karrde_ ’s cargo hold Karrde had handed the lead to her, and the huge animal had gone with her uncomplainingly as she followed the same Berchestian crewman through the winding passages of the enormous ship. The crewman, whose name was Dankin, had not said much, but after Drang had attempted to follow her back out of the room, yarring angrily when rebuffed, he had been obviously impressed. “They’ve taken to you sure enough,” he remarked. “Boss was right. Will save us a right lot of trouble, I tell you, having a professional keeping these beggars in line,” he added with a grin. “Much obliged to you.” 

 

So Kyah was the official keeper and caretaker of Talon Karrde’s dangerous pets for as long as they remained on Blackmoon, and, menial role though it might have been, she was happier than she had been in an extremely long time.

 

Karrde had offered no explanation for why he had troubled to arrange for her to join the Republic - surely, even for the head of the Federation of Independent Traders, it could not have been accomplished with a snap of the fingers - nor had she dared ask. Looking after his pets for a short time was not a task that demanded a transfer of allegiances, and if it were it would surely have made more sense for him to have hired her himself. She knew that she was now in his debt, and that Talon Karrde was for certainty a man who collected on his debts. Had he known what it would mean to her to be free of the Consortium? How could he have? And if he had, what could he hope to get from her in repayment? She was a biologist and a medic with an unexplained knack for handling his pets, nothing more.

 

In her elation, she was finding it hard to care about Karrde’s possible motivations. Whatever she owed him, and however he chose to collect on his debt, she would deal that with when the time came. For the moment, she decided to let herself revel in the blissful sense of freedom, the massive miserable workload and emotional strain of the past months and years finally starting to fade away. 

 

So preoccupied was she that it was some time before she realised that she was in a part of the base that was completely unfamiliar. She stopped in front of a massive computer terminal with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, knowing she had definitely never seen it before: it was surmounted with a giant glowing squadron insignia, a dozen X-wings silhouetted in formation against an Alliance starbird. Cursing under her breath, she looked around, wondering how far she had walked in the wrong direction and where she could have taken the first wrong turn.    

 

The passageway she was in was wide and brightly-lit, set with sleek numbered grey doors spaced widely and evenly apart. _Living quarters_ , she thought. _But whose? And why aren’t they in a secure wing?_  

 

In her pocket, her new access card clicked against the datapad and at once she knew. _This_ ** _is_** _a secure wing. I’m just at a higher clearance level now._ She had walked, without realizing it, through the wrong door beyond the mess hall, simply because it had opened for her, which it never had before. Relieved she wasn’t entirely lost, she skirted the terminal and made her way back down the hallway in the direction from which she’d come.

 

Suddenly, a strange, sharp noise caught her attention and she stopped dead. _What now?_

 

It was definitely not vornskrs, she decided. It was an intermittent scraping, scratching sound, amplified in the silence of the corridor but still very faint. It was not mechanical; it was too erratic, too deliberate to be mechanical. It sounded, she thought, like something small and subterranean, something with many scurrying legs or perhaps even small claws. _Vermin?_ she wondered. _Something that escaped from a compactor?_  

 

When it started up again, it was startlingly close, and sounded as though it were coming from an obviously empty patch of wall at floor level less than a metre from where she was standing. On closer examination, she could see the seams where a layer of panels had been added to the wall, meaning there were spaces underneath where a small scuttling creature might be able to hide. 

 

Almost without thinking, she reached into her bag. Somewhere in there was a set of clear jars - meant for tissue samples, but large enough to perhaps accommodate a small creature if it decided to emerge…

 

Just as her fingers closed around one, she saw it.  

 

It hopped out from a narrow vent behind the panelling, a little, vaguely crystalline bipedal insect with stout strong hind legs and delicate clawed forelegs held folded before it in an way that made it look ludicrously like a humanoid at prayer. Large, close-spaced eyes set high on a small triangular head darted keenly from side to side until it saw her and paused uncertainly. 

 

Slowly, keeping her movements steady, Kyah inched forward. The insect stared directly at her, neither visibly afraid nor antagonistic. She went down on one knee and cautiously extended her free hand, palm outward. It hopped back in alarm, its curved mandibles clicking, then stopped, swaying irresolutely. She stayed as still as possible, edging her fingertips forward in almost infinitesimal increments. _Come on_ , she thought encouragingly. _Not going to hurt you._

 

After a moment’s hesitation, it advanced, one careful, swaying step at a time. It paused when it reached her outstretched fingertips, brushing her skin experimentally with a foreleg before finally hopping up into her hand. She let it walk across to her palm while, in her other hand, she quietly worked the lid off the sample jar. The moment the little insect’s head was turned, she brought the jar up and in a swift motion clapped it upside down over her palm, trapping the creature underneath. 

 

Outraged, it fluttered furiously, long gossamer wings erupting from under the wing casings on its back, scrabbling at the sides of its prison with mandibles and forelegs, but there was nothing it could do. Holding the jar closed with one hand, she sat up, flushed with triumph.

 

And almost dropped both jar and insect as, without warning, the door immediately to her right hissed open and a human man rushed out, stopping short when he saw her there on the floor. 

 

“What are you - ” he began, then caught sight of the jar she had somehow managed to hold on to and his eye widened.

 

It was his only real eye. Where the other should have been, there was a dull red circle glowing out of a smooth metal plate that at a glance might have passed for a mask, but which was actually a prosthetic that made up fully a quarter of his face, extending from the middle of his forehead across to his temple from his hairline down to the top of his cheekbone, skirting a nose that, though intact, looked as though it might have been broken at some time in the past. He was naked from the waist up, and another prosthesis gleamed at his right side, starting below his ribs and extending into the waistband of his loose drawstring pants. 

 

“Where did you get that?” he demanded.

 

“I caught it,” she said. “Just now. I heard it scratching around and then it popped out of that vent.”

 

“Oh gods.” He rubbed his forehead, sounding extraordinarily relieved, though she could not imagine why. “I have no idea who you are, my lady, but you’re providential. You’ve saved me untold stress and at least an hour I’d never get back.”  

 

She stared at him, confused. “What?”

 

He grinned. The part of his face that was not metal was lean, with well-cut features, short straw-blond hair and a matching close-trimmed beard. His one remaining real eye was bright blue, with a sardonic, impish glint. 

 

“You’re holding a pet of mine,” he explained. “An uncommon one, to be sure, but to which I am attached all the same.”          

 

Faced with the contrast between the first escaped pets she had caught that day and the tiny, enraged insect fluttering impotently in her hand, Kyah burst out laughing, unable to help herself. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “It’s a long story. Do you have a tank? I’d give you the jar but it’s not technically mine.” 

 

He looked at the jar, then back at her, and his expression changed. “I was wrong. I _do_ know you. At least, I think I do. You’re with the Obroa-Skai group.”

 

And as he said it she realised she knew him too. She had seen him in the medical centre - had even been told who he was. “And you’re a pilot,” she said, remembering what Dr. Kest had said. “The Wraiths’ medical officer.”  

 

There was an edge of pride in his smile. “That I am.” He held out his hand. “Ton Phanan.”

 

“Kyah Imani.” She shifted the jar deftly so she could shake his hand. “Although,” she couldn’t resist adding, “I’m not with the Consortium any more.”

     

“Good for you,” he said, with feeling. “They’re fairly appalling, as much as you might be offended by my saying so.”

 

“Not in the least,” she said cheerfully, and he grinned again. He had a nice smile, she thought inconsequentially. 

 

“Glad to hear it.” He gestured through the open door. “My quarters. I have a tank in here. I can take that, and bring the jar back to the medcentre at my next shift. Or,” he said, his eye twinkling, “I can give it back to you when we meet for our drink?”

 

She replaced the lid on the jar and handed it to him. “Our drink?” 

 

“The least I can do, for helping me recapture my little friend,” he said. “What do you say, Dr. Imani?”

 

Kyah considered. She liked him, she decided. And it had been so long since she had been able to do anything as gloriously normal as have a drink after a work shift… “You’re on.”   

 

He sketched a bow. “The Park, tonight? I shall be there at 0900.”

 

“See you then,” she agreed, and smiled. 


	5. Interlude: Fight Club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sparring session escalates, and all is clearly not well with Luke and Mara. 
> 
> Corran means well, but is still...well, Corran.

 

“Well, that was unexpected,” Corran said dryly. 

 

He spun the handle of his lightsaber around his fingers without turning it on; the distant thudding of bay doors signalled the unceremonious departure of both vornskrs, happily following the woman who had somehow tracked them there. She had been almost rigid with poorly-concealed terror, and none of it directed at the giant lethal predators. It had been some time since he had seen a woman look at him with such naked fear, and it was not a pleasant feeling.  

 

Shada d’Ukal shook her head. She was reading a message on her commlink. “Karrde’s going to see her. He’s looked up her records. She wasn’t lying, she has worked with vornskrs in the past.”  

 

Luke had ignited his own saber, and reactivated the swarm of remotes around him with a flick of his wrist, but almost instantly he waved them off again. A moment later, the doors re-opened and Wes Janson entered, with Hobbie Klivian in tow.

 

Hobbie glanced around the empty room with some apprehension.

 

“I don’t see any bodies, so I assume the security breach is under control?” he asked.

 

“No thanks to us, really,” Corran said. 

 

“Yeah, we saw the security cams,” Wes said with a grin. “Cubber’s bricking himself, thinks he’ll be blamed for the door shorting out, since he set it up.” 

 

"What I don't understand is, why did they come here?" Hobbie demanded. "With an entire base to wreak havoc in..."

 

"Vornskrs hunt with the Force," Mara said, with a touch of impatience. "They can track Force-sensitives, especially ones they know."

 

"They also adore you both, for reasons I'll never understand," Corran put in. Mara merely rolled her eyes, and Luke smiled briefly. 

 

"Do we know who the girl is?" Hobbie inquired. "And why they didn't tear her into meat shreds?"

 

Corran shrugged. "I didn't pick up anything from her. Force-sensitivity, I mean." 

 

"I didn't either," Luke said thoughtfully. "But," he mused, "She could be Force-sensitive in a way I've never encountered."

 

"Is that likely?" Corran said skeptically. 

 

"Anything's possible," Luke said simply. 

 

"As a more immediate concern, what happens to them now?" Wes asked, turning to Shada. "If Karrde wants them back in that pen it'll need some work." 

 

“We’ll see,” Shada said. She slung a towel around her neck, sat down on a bench and began to pull on her boots. “Sorry, Mara. I have to go.” 

 

Mara nodded. “It’s all right. Thanks for the workout.” She reached for her own towel. 

 

“You’re training already?” Hobbie said, incredulously. “You were in the medcentre three hours ago.” 

 

“And now I’m out of it,” Mara replied, a little irritably. “I’m fine.”  

 

“So…you’re done already?” Corran asked, a little too innocently.  

 

She turned to glare at him, and he grinned. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Luke open his mouth as though to say something, then evidently think better of it and close it again. 

 

They had both been in the middle of saber drills when Mara had walked in, Shada d’ukal behind her. The strange tension that had been palpable between Luke and her since their arrival on Blackmoon was more evident than ever, so much so that Corran was sure it was not necessary to be Force-sensitive to pick up on it.

 

Or even, really, entirely awake.  

 

They had not said more than a handful of words to each other since the _Fire_ had landed hours before. Even as she lay in her bunk in the medcentre with his hand on her temple, helping her into a healing trance, she had said nothing and neither had he, each avoiding the other’s eyes.  

 

They had acknowledged each other only with brief, stiff nods in the training room, before Luke busied himself with split-focus defence training against every blast remote Blackmoon base possessed and Mara began hand-to-hand combat drills with Shada, who was not remotely Force-sensitive, but who had been a Shadow Guard of the Mistryl and whose combat skills were a match even for a Force-adept former Imperial assassin.  

 

Luke had still not told him what had happened to the _Fire,_ or how he had been able to intercept her in time after an attack no-one had seen coming. Corran had wanted to ask, but something in Luke’s set, drawn face had held him back. Mara had been no more forthcoming. But Corran Horn did not deal well with unexplained reticence, and even less with not being in the know.   

 

 _Enough of this_ , he thought, decidedly. 

 

“Come on,” he said aloud to Mara, with a grin he knew would infuriate her. “You haven’t even switched on your saber. That’s not a workout.” 

 

The look she gave him would have made a rancor quail, but he pressed on, cheerfully. “You know one-on-one bladework is your weakest point. I’m just trying to help.”

 

That did it. She said nothing, but all at once her saber was in her hand, the blazing blade coming up in front of her in a challenge that her eyes reflected.  

 

“Master Skywalker,” Corran called, trying to keep the triumph out of his voice and only partly succeeding. “Your student.” 

 

Mara’s jaw tightened and she shifted her grip on the hilt of her saber, but, as he’d anticipated, she didn’t move. Backing down was an anathema to her, and the barest hint of a suggestion that she was backing down from Luke would have been even more so. 

 

Luke shot him an exasperated look. “Mara, we don’t have to spar if you don’t want to.”    

 

“Stalling, Skywalker?”  

 

Luke raised an eyebrow. Hobbie and Wes were trying their hardest not to laugh, with limited success; fortunately for them, both were out of Mara’s line of sight. Even Shada looked amused. 

 

Abruptly the hovering training remotes began to retreat, flying into shelves, dropping into crates, piling themselves into neat stacks on the floor. As the dozens of metal spheres fell away from him, Luke brought his saber up in a silent salute.   

 

Watching his friend and mentor, Corran saw him transmute, his presence in the Force shifting along with his physical stance, and a raw ripple of something raw yet incorporeal darted between the two of them: Mara gripping her blade two-handed with thrumming barely-contained agitation rolling off her in waves, Luke perfectly still, one hand - the real one - at his side, its fingers flexing slightly as though testing currents in the air. 

 

For the first time since they had arrived on Blackmoon base, he saw their eyes meet. 

 

Mara moved first, but only Corran saw it. Luke’s blade leapt to block hers and, almost in the same motion, swivelled and cut, forcing her to drop back and defend as blow after blow rained down in an almost indistinguishable blur. A dancer’s sidestep and a feint, and she regained a momentary advantage, but, as skilled as she was - and she moved with more fluid grace than anyone Corran had ever known - it was simply not enough. 

 

Luke was moving faster than thought, every step and slash and cut flowing into the next with complete assurance. He never lost the upper hand for more than a split-second. As Mara began to breathe hard and drop back more and more to evaluate, to look for an opening, he circled quietly, expressionlessly, not bothering with showy feints or sidesteps, but merely waiting for the next strike and deflecting it without effort when it came, or vanishing from under it entirely so her blade slashed empty air and she growled in frustration. Before long, her form had begun to break, her control fragmenting as she resorted more and more to reflexive lunges and wild swings. 

 

Luke said nothing, either to distract or encourage her. Corran had never seen them spar like this - tense and wordless and unsmiling, not quite fighting a real fight but not falling into their usual, often barbed, yet essentially fond, repartee either. Before he had time to ponder at any length about what was going on, he saw Mara gather herself, off-balance by just the barest fraction of an inch, and knew what was about to happen before it did.

 

She leapt and brought her saber slicing down as she landed, but instead of crashing solidly into the middle of Luke’s blade it met it at an angle, just above the hilt. With a flick of the wrist he disarmed her, sending the blue-bladed lightsaber spinning in a wild arc across the room for a few seconds before it froze in mid-air, shut itself down and flew to his left hand.  

 

It should have been the end, but Mara did not miss a beat, twisting to the side and launching a vicious sideways kick at Luke’s head. He flung himself backward at the last possible second and somersaulted in midair, landing a few feet away with the beginnings of a frown creasing his forehead. Still, he said nothing. Once again, their eyes locked and Corran felt the same electric flare through the Force. 

 

 _What in seven hells…_  

 

Hobbie and Wes were staring openly, with an interesting mixture of awe and amusement and not a little concern. Even Shada, who had been about to leave, was still watching intently.    

 

Mara flung herself forward. Luke dropped and spun, his leg scything out; Mara leapt into a reverse flip to avoid it, then used her own momentum to launch herself up at him, sending them both crashing to the floor with her atop him, straddling his waist. Her advantage was undermined somewhat by the fact that he had her arms locked behind her back, gripping both wrists tight in his hands. She managed a prodigious kick that only sent them rolling, over and over until their positions were reversed. Instantly Luke braced, locking his knees, pinning her down, tensing every muscle in his body against her struggling, which was quickly losing finesse. She was breathing hard, her eyes blazing up into his, and Corran saw a brief flash of vivid emotion in his face.

 

With a convulsive, herculean effort, Mara wrenched a hand free and drove the heel of it into Luke’s arm; he let her go and she scrambled out from under him. He was up in the blink of an eye, backing away a step, waiting for her to regain her feet. She was only seconds behind him, but she held off, edging back, weighing her next move. Her hair was beginning to escape from its braid, and her skin gleamed with sweat. Their eyes locked, and Luke swallowed hard.    

 

Out of nowhere, a shrill jarring _beep-bee-beep_  broke the spell, and Corran jumped and swore violently. 

 

Shada’s commlink.   

 

She started, looking guilty, and flicked it on. “Shada,” she said quickly.

 

Talon Karrde’s voice drifted out, loud enough for them all to hear. “Ah, Shada. I take it you’re still in the training bay. How is Mara?”

 

“Fine,” she said, though Corran could have sworn he saw a trace of a smile on her usually imperturbable face.  

  

“Excellent,” Karrde said. “I will see her at the _Fire_ ’s docking bay at 2200. I would have told her myself,” he added pointedly, “But her commlink is switched off.” 

 

This time Shada did smile, and hastily recomposed her features. “I’ll tell her.”

 

“Thank you. Karrde out.”

 

Mara strode past Corran without looking at him and snatched up her towel, commlink, and boots. As she walked she reached out, and her lightsaber leapt from where Luke had dropped it on the floor, flying to her hand. Before he could formulate what to say to her she was gone, Shada close behind her. Corran turned to where Luke had been standing, opening his mouth still without really knowing what he was going to say - but Luke was no longer there.

 

He had moved back to the middle of the training floor, his saber ignited and ready in his hand, his back to all three of them. 

 

As if to punctuate the dismissal, the training remotes that had only moments before been returned to their places soared back through the air. Even before they had assembled into formation around him they began to fire and Luke was moving, his lightsaber lengthening into a flashing pane of light as he deflected blast after deafening blast, faster and faster. Where before they had fired one at a time, in random patterns, now five or ten or even fifteen were firing at once, and in moments the air was full of noise and flashing light and acrid, burning smoke.

 

They left him there, never slowing and never missing, fending off enough raw firepower to bring down a starfighter, sunk deep into the Force. 


	6. Memory and Desire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens, Luke is Extremely Troubled, and Mara Jade is...just really not having a good day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, feedback and comments welcomed. Thanks for reading!

The hangar was deserted when she arrived. Mara suspected that was not entirely coincidental, but however it had been accomplished, she was glad of it. 

 

The _Fire_ sat in a corner, surrounded by mechanical detritus and piles of parts and tools, the evidence of an entire day’s work by Blackmoon’s mechanics and cadets. They had accomplished an impressive amount in a comparatively short space of time, but it was still hard for her to look at her beloved ship without wincing, knowing how much damage the systems had sustained, and how much work still remained to be done before it would be spaceworthy again.  

 

Karrde was there already, studying the exposed, scorched wiring where the mechanics had prised off the blasted remnants of panelling on the lower starboard side of the ship’s nose. It was all that was left of the _Fire_ ’s comm transceiver array. 

 

His eyes moved to her as she approached, looking her up and down. 

 

“You look better,” he said eventually. “How do you feel?” 

 

“Fine,” she answered, staring at the damaged hull. It was like witnessing a terrible desecration. The shields had been down for a matter of seconds, but it had been long enough.          

 

“That’s good.” She could sense his skepticism, but he knew better than to voice it. “Tell me what happened.”

 

Mara grimaced. 

 

“Our intel was wrong,” she said, reluctantly.

 

His expression did not change, but his hands closed briefly into fists. A fraction of a second of  disbelief in his mindsense gave way to cold, dark anger and then, just as quickly, to rapid assessment, wheels spinning and gears turning, darting between whys and hows. Talon Karrde’s information was infallible; it was the bedrock of his organization and the hallmark of his renown. He had staked his life on it many times, and the lives of his crew: and this time it had both failed him and put her at risk.

 

“Forgive me,” he said at last. “I should have dug deeper before sending you to Ororos. This could have been avoided.”

 

She shook her head. “It happens.”

 

“It shouldn’t.”

 

She looked at him with a mixture of exasperation and wry affection. Karrde hated more than nearly anything to be proved wrong, but he was a man of honour, and his protectiveness toward his crew always outweighed his ego.   

 

“It wasn’t entirely wrong,” she amended. “There are shipments leaving. That part was true enough.”  

 

“So…”

 

“More of them than we were told. Far, far more. Not a few discreet transports, it was a convoy. I’ve seen cities evacuated with fewer ships. And they weren’t leaving from the co-ordinates I had, which would be why I came out of hyperspace just about on top of them.” 

 

“Ah.” Karrde nodded in sudden understanding. “Hence this - ” He swept his arm in a gesture encompassing most of the damaged section of the _Fire_ ’s hull. 

 

“They didn’t even try to make contact,” she said. “They saw me and started blasting. I had the shields down to cut in the sublight engines, and they blew my grav emulator and inertial damper power cells to pieces before I could power the shields up again.” In the ensuing chaos, before her Veeone had managed to reroute power and stabilize the ship, she had been flung from one end of the violently rocking bridge to the other, slamming into surfaces and bouncing off panels. She’d managed to cushion herself from the worst of the impact with the Force, but she’d ended up with a concussion, a gash across her scalp and a broken leg nonetheless.

 

Karrde’s face was grim. “Did you manage to get a visual on the escort ships?”

 

“Slips did,” Mara said, referring to her Veeone droid. “MAF gunships. At least a dozen of them.”

 

“Ships that, according to the declaration of surrender to the Republic issued by their Governor, Ororos does not possess,” said Karrde. “Of course, neither are there meant to be shipments of undeclared, unidentified and most definitely unlicensed merchandise leaving the planet in droves, so I think we can safely assume that most of the terms of that declaration are fiction.”

 

“Which you knew already,” Mara said. 

 

“I suspected.” Karrde said dryly. “The Governor of Ororos is an Imperial, and a particularly craven one at that. As far as Solo and I can tell, his standard of living has dropped somewhat since the fall of the Empire, and he wishes to bring it back up again with the trade revenue allying with the Republic will bring.” 

 

“Charming.”

 

“There is also, of course, the useful benefit of Republic military assistance.”

 

Mara frowned. “Assistance against what?”     

 

He smiled without humour. “Roughly one standard hour after you were attacked, Leia Organa-Solo’s staff received a distress call from the planet. A distraught governor, begging for help against violent Imperial insurgents bent on revenge for his betrayal.”   

 

She snorted. “How terrible for him. I take it there was no mention of these violent insurgents in the declaration?”

 

“None whatsoever,” said Karrde. “The good Governor’s tactical awareness matches his courage, but, nevertheless, the insurgents exist.”  

 

“You know that for sure?”      

 

From a pocket of his jacket, he extracted a datacard and handed it to her. A blue Rebel Alliance starbird surrounded by a ring of gold starflares was etched into its surface. 

 

“This is Republic Intelligence,” she said. 

 

“From Iella Wessiri herself. Encrypted to five DNA fingerprints only, including yours and mine.” 

 

“Since when am I considered worthy of such trust from NRI top brass?” Mara asked, skeptically. 

 

“Quite some time, as a matter of fact,” Karrde said blandly. “Which you’d know if you’d been paying attention.” She stared at him, incredulous, but he went on, “There are reports on that from NRI agents, some on Ororos and one - who happens to be our old friend Moranda - on Tatooine.”   

 

“Why Tatooine?” 

 

He sighed. “There have been…rumours. Stirrings. No more, no less. Ships landing in the desert where locals fear to venture. Activity in the old monastery. An overly garrulous spacer or two vanishing after running his mouth about hitting a credit mine. Each, on its own, hardly noteworthy. But all together…”

 

“There’s more. Isn’t there? Something’s happened.”

 

He grimaced, and Mara felt a sudden pang of foreboding. Anything serious enough to disrupt Talon Karrde’s armour-clad sangfroid had to be much more dire than a small-time smuggler’s ring operating without his knowledge on a forsaken Outer Rim planet. He had worked long and methodically to wipe out all traces of Jabba the Hutt’s criminal empire, and any aspiring revivalists would have come into his sights long before they could get very much done. It had to be something else. 

 

“A few weeks ago, Iella Wessiri’s agents received a message,” Karrde said. “A garbled and incoherent one, from the ruler of a small, independent and relatively unimportant world: in other words, precisely the type of individual that seeks favour with those in power through outlandish fabricated claims. In this case, it was, in essence, a warning of the return of Grand Admiral Thrawn.”       

 

“That’s definitely outlandish. And fabricated.”

 

“And that is how we would have left it, had he not stolen a ship belonging to a visiting trade delegation and flown it to Tatooine, a place to which he has no ties and has never visited before, then vanished without a trace. Though not,” he added, “Before re-sending his message approximately four dozen times during the trip.”   

 

Mara shook her head. “That’s not normal behaviour, but still…”

 

“It does not convince me, or Solo, or the NRI that Thrawn’s return is imminent, no,” Karrde agreed. “However, there are too many connected threads here for coincidence. And there is the small matter of Skywalker’s involvement as well.”

 

There it was. The tension that had been simmering within her from the moment Skywalker’s voice had floated through the comms of her crippled ship limping through Ororos Prime’s atmosphere flared at the mention of his name, and she could not keep the fury and resentment from her voice as she snapped, “Skywalker’s involvement. Is that why you sent him after me as a blasted nursemaid? Did he come to you with a vision of some catastrophe I _obviously_ wouldn’t be able to handle?”

 

There was a long moment of absolute silence. Karrde’s cool grey eyes grew visibly cooler, but she was too angry to care. 

 

“I didn’t send him after you,” he said steadily.  

 

She blinked. “You - what?”

 

“I didn’t send him after you,” Karrde repeated, emphasizing every syllable. “I would not have sent you to Ororos had I expected an attack, nor would I have sent an escort that you did not know about and had not asked for. Skywalker contacted me shortly after he boarded the _Fire_ , told me that he had found you, that you were injured, and that he would help you bring the ship in to Blackmoon.” 

 

Mara’s mind was a whirl. He was telling her the truth - she could feel it, but moreover, Karrde had never, ever, to her knowledge, deliberately lied to her. A stab of guilt shot through her, heightened tenfold when he said, quietly and with a trace of something that might have been regret or disappointment or both, “I am sorry that you think I would do that to you.”

 

“No,” she muttered, dropping her eyes. “I should have known you wouldn’t.” 

 

She could feel his eyes on her, and the appraisal in his thoughts, and she bit her lip, furious at herself. _Skywalker_. What was it about him that clouded her reason, that made her give in to rushes of emotion that she usually mastered with such ease? How did he manage to do this to her, always?

 

“He wasn’t following you.” Karrde’s voice brought her back into the moment. “You happened to share a flight path. He is on a mission of his own, to Tatooine.”

 

“Which is what?” she asked, and instantly wished she hadn’t.

 

Karrde looked thoughtful. “You would be best off asking him that yourself, I think.” The look he gave her was heavy with meaning.

 

She bit down on the inside of her cheek, hard enough that she tasted blood. “What’s next?” she ground out.

 

He let it go. “Solo is en route to Ororos now in the star cruiser  _Wayfarer._ The Imperial insurgent threat is real enough, and civilian lives are at stake; he is leading three fighter squadrons and anticipates a fight. Antilles and a few of his command team are on Tatooine already, should you choose to work with them when you get there. Antilles has promised complete co-operation. As has Skywalker, though he has, as I say, his own affairs to handle, but he seems to think it likely that his affairs and ours may not be entirely mutually exclusive.”

 

Mara nodded tightly. She’d expected as much.  

 

“I would wish you to depart as soon as the _Fire_ is ready to fly. In the meantime, that - ” He indicated the datacard she was still holding “ - contains, I think, all you need to know. It is remarkably comprehensive. Iella Wessiri knows her business, it would seem.”

 

“I’ll start on it now.”   

 

“Good. She has authorized a secure comm channel to her offices for you if you need it.” He turned to leave.

 

“Karrde,” she called, and he looked back inquiringly. “How’s Chin?”

 

His expression darkened. “No better. But no worse, either. Dr. Kest and several of her staff have been working on his case at all hours, for which I am grateful.” 

 

She nodded, unsure of what else to say. Karrde glanced across the bay; he was looking, she saw, at Skywalker’s X-wing, and there was something in his expression that made her desperately uncomfortable.

 

Before he could say anything, she whipped around and hurried up the ramp into the Fire. _Datapad_ , she thought resolutely. _Time to work_.  

 

 

* * *

   

 

 

By the third hour of combing through the files on the datacard, Mara had to admit that Karrde had been right: Iella Wessiri did, indeed, know her business. It was engrossing reading, but it was getting harder and harder to ignore how tired she was. The only sleep she had had in close to 48 hours had been while in the healing trances Luke had put her in; the first on the Fire as he piloted it back to Borleias, and then in the medical centre of the base.  

    

His X-wing sat directly in her line of sight. She couldn’t work in the _Fire,_ gutted for repairs as it was, and the thought of running the gamut of gawping NR staff to find a terminal in the base had been more than she could stand. Instead she’d set up a workstation for herself in the least-cluttered corner of the bay and it was serving her admirably, but every time she looked up, there was his ship, and try as she might she could not keep thoughts of him from drifting, maddeningly, into her mind. 

 

Skywalker. Fates preserve her from Jedi entanglements. 

 

 _You’re already entangled_ , a tiny voice in her head piped up. _You wear his lightsaber, for Sith's sake._

 

It hung from her belt, the weight of it against her hip both familiar and reassuring. She had owned it for so long now that she could use it and wear it without constantly being reminded of the men who had owned it before her. Anakin Skywalker, forging it as a final Trial, confidently assured that a glorious destiny awaited him. Luke receiving it, wrapped in a comforting lie, from Obi-wan Kenobi, then losing it as he discovered the truth that had nearly cost him his life as well as his right hand.

 

 _Luke_.

 

She didn’t need to turn around. As usual, he wasn’t shielding all the way, and she felt the ripple of his presence at the edge of her awareness. 

 

The familiarity of him unsettled her deeply. She had grown more attuned to the Force over the years - largely through his tutelage, she acknowledged reluctantly - and there were now many whose presence she could detect by sense alone, Force-adepts and others, but it was different with him. He glowed brighter, warmer, _closer_ than anyone else in a way that owed nothing to physical proximity. She could feel him without reaching out and see him without trying, especially, as now, when he came to her with his guard down. 

 

 _I see him whether or not I want to_ , she thought resentfully. Almost instantly the tiny traitorous voice spoke, soft but insistent, in the back of her mind: _And are you so certain you don’t want to?_

 

 _I know what I want_.

 

She saw him clearly in her mind’s eye as he stepped out from the shadows beyond the open bay doors behind her, holding…a tray?

 

“Wes said you’d missed dinner.” His voice was carefully neutral. “I brought you some food. I thought you might be hungry.” 

 

She wasn’t. But trust Skywalker to involve food in every possible interaction. “Thanks,” she said curtly, keeping her eyes to her datapad, staring at the words without seeing them. Seeing him instead, freshly clean-shaven with the ends of his overlong hair still damp from the shower and the last faint traces of the bruise she’d given him still just visible on his forearm.

 

She stared harder at the screen, letting the silence stretch out between them. Hopefully he’d take the hint and leave, hopefully bringing her food had satisfied the dictates of his saviour complex for the moment.

 

She should have known better.

 

“Are you all right?” he asked quietly. 

 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she snapped, and immediately regretted it. A flicker of something deep, raw, _dangerous_ , flared between them, though from him or her she couldn’t tell, and for a moment she _felt_ the memory as vividly as though she were reliving it; rough mats at her back and the solid muscled weight of him on top of her. The look in his eyes, pupils dilating into something deeper and more intense than concentration at the exact moment his laser-honed focus slipped to something altogether different, and was it his awareness or hers that rose up between them of the intimacy of body against body, were the visceral darts of heat and need his or hers, or both? 

 

She stood up, so abruptly she almost knocked over the towering pile of parts on the cart beside her, drawing up all her mental shields around her as tightly as she could. “I’m fine,” she said, aware of how strained she sounded and hating herself for it. “Thanks for the food.”

 

“Mara - ”

 

“Skywalker.” She forced herself to look him in the eye, to smooth the agitation from her voice. “Save it. I’m fine. You won the bout, you didn’t disable me.”    

 

“I know that. I - ”

 

“I’m not in the mood for lectures about form. If I was hurt, I’d already have taken care of it. And I’m busy,” she bit out. “I have work to do. I don’t have time to waste on you right now.”

 

His emotions were roiling; she could feel it even through her shields, which might as well not have been there for all the good they were doing against him. He looked tired, and regretful, and utterly bereft, as though she were taking something precious and longed-for away from him for ever. Irrationally she thought, _how easy it is to hurt him, words that others would shrug off cut him to the quick._    

 

 _Only when they come from you_ , said the small voice slyly. 

 

He took a deep breath. A steadying breath. A sudden look of understanding came into his eyes - of what? “I’m sorry,” he said evenly. “I didn’t mean to waste your time.”

 

And somehow that was even worse; it would have been better if he had argued, given her the excuse she needed to lash out at him. Instead the bright warm presence of him dimmed abruptly; he’d raised his own shields. 

 

He’d shielded from her before, of course. Even Skywalker preferred not to broadcast his emotional state on a constant open channel. But this was entirely different. He’d withdrawn almost completely. More than ever before.

 

It felt as though a part of her own mind had dropped out of existence. She would never have believed that the absence of him in her head would feel so wrong, and almost immediately she was hit with a wave of longing so intense it was almost physically painful.      

 

Mara realised she was shaking. Blindly she snatched up her datapad, then turned on her heel and strode towards her ship without another word. Blood was pounding in her head, the nameless resistence in her mind straining back towards him, bitterly protesting the separation, but she made herself keep walking and left him standing silently there in the dim emptiness of the hangar bay.

 


	7. Echoes

She woke to the roar of engines, startled out of a sleep so deep and dreamless that for a fearful microsecond she wasn’t sure where she was. 

 

Her cabin had escaped damage in the attack on the _Fire_ , for which Mara had been profoundly grateful. It meant a space of her own to retreat to and sleep in, away from the noise and chatter and organized chaos of Blackmoon, though the quarters she had been offered there at Leia Organa-Solo’s behest had been more than adequate for her needs. As reluctant as she was to admit it even to herself, the thought of falling asleep with Skywalker nearby was more than she could bear. 

 

 _Afraid of what he might pick up on when you’re not holding those shields up for dear life?_ asked the sardonic, enraging voice in her head that she could never seem to silence.     

 

Mara swore aloud and flung back her sheets. 

 

There was no mistaking the engine blast; with that low whining hum under the bellow of exhaust. 

 

X-wings. 

 

The hollow in her mind where he had been felt cold and cavernously empty, like a vacant room with the imprints of the former occupant lingering in the walls and the very atmosphere of the place heavy with expectation, as though this state of affairs must surely be only temporary and any minute a door would open and that warmth and light would sweep back in to settle back where it belonged. 

 

She rubbed her temples almost savagely. Skywalker did _not_ ‘belong’ in her mind, she reminded herself. Not in her mind, not in her physical space, not in her thoughts. He had removed himself from the first two, so why, _why_ did he keep cropping up in the last?

 

From her cabin viewport she could see them all - Corran, Hobbie Klivian, Wes Janson - and Skywalker, in a cut-down flightsuit so patched and worn that it had probably been old even during the Rebellion, settling into the cockpit of his fighter and nodding patiently at the stream of twittering commentary from that astromech of his. Where Mara had slept better than she had in weeks - possibly months - he looked like he had not slept at all. The shadows under his eyes that had already been there when he had come to her rescue on Ororos now looked permanently etched in place. His face was more gaunt than she could ever remember seeing it, and despite everything she felt a pang of an emotion she did not dare to name.   

 

Under ordinary circumstances, the Fire’s hull was more than robust enough to block out the noise of a few starfighters preparing for takeoff. But now, with huge swathes of panelling either blown away or removed by the mechanics’ crew, just about every sound in the docking bay filtered through. She wondered why it had not woken her earlier. There had been something almost unnatural about how deeply she’d slept, Mara reflected. If she wasn’t so certain it was impossible, she’d almost have thought she’d been drugged.

 

Almost without thinking, she pulled open a hidden compartment in the cabin wall and drew out a tiny pneumatic-action hypodermic. It was a relic of her old life. A retractable chamber admitted a single vial, into which blood from a target could flow, or from which a few ccs of liquid could be injected into the bloodstream. 

 

A few ccs was usually all it took. 

 

A sea of faces rose briefly up before her eyes; old and young, male and female, human and not. Bearers of information that she’d needed, or death marks that had made them her targets. All those that had felt the cold metal of that hypodermic; only for a fraction of a second, and for some it had been the last sensation they had ever felt in life.  

 

Now, the only vials in the case were empty. Mara ripped the hermetic seal from one and rammed it into the chamber, then placed the nozzle to her own arm and pressed the trigger. A moment later, she resealed the vial, now full of her own blood, and slapped a plaster over the tiny pinprick in her skin. 

 

She couldn’t have been drugged. _But no harm in making sure_ , she thought grimly. Karrde had one of Blackmoon’s medical technicians looking after Sturm and Drang; the same one who had followed them to the training centre and to whom they had taken such an unaccountable liking. Getting the woman to run a toxicology screening on her blood - and be discreet about it - should be easy enough. If it came to that, intimidating her into silence wouldn’t be a challenge. The doctor’s fear had been palpable both through the Force and from the expression on her face, manifestly obvious in the rigidity of her stance.   

 

Once more, faces from the past flashed through her mind. So many there were, and so many more she had forgotten. They had meant nothing to her, after all. So many living beings, but each merely a task to complete. As well remember the serial numbers of every training remote blasted to pieces during practices. 

 

 _More reasons to fear me than even you could ever know, Doctor._  

 

She brought herself resolutely back to the present moment, and it was pure bad luck that in the present moment was a viewport, beyond which was Luke Skywalker, looking directly at her ship as though, logical impossibility and their blocked-off mental link be damned, he could see across the hangar bay and through the transparisteel and see her. As they had the previous night, his eyes held sadness and pain and a longing that reverberated through the empty room she had pushed far back to the furthest recesses of her mind, thrumming across the taut strings of emotions wound tight and buried deep. 

 

The X-wing’s cockpit hatch dropped down into place, taking him out of her sight.

 

Corran Horn, already moving, gave the _Fire_ a knowing look through his own windshield as he guided his fighter to the launch position, just in front of where the magcon shield shimmered across the open tunnel mouth. 

 

Exactly on cue her commlink crackled to life, and Corran’s voice filtered though, sardonic as ever, edged with the odd affection the cocky Corellian had unaccountably developed for her. “See you soon, Mara. Clear skies.”  

 

“Try not to blow anything up before I get there, CorSec.”

 

“No promises.” 

 

A roar of thrusters and his fighter was off, soaring neatly out and up into a sky still pearly-grey with faint streaks of pink. The others followed in quick succession; the last one with more finesse than all the previous three put together, and all three had been moving with the effortless grace of good ships with some of the finest starpilots in the galaxy at their helms. But, as many gushing holoreporters often pointed out, the galaxy had never before seen a pilot to match the Jedi Skywalker’s skill. 

  

 

* * *

 

 

 

Mara found the doctor in a quiet corner of the medical centre, surrounded by mountains of datacards and sealed jars brimming with blood of every colour and fragments of unidentifiable flesh in varying stages of decomposition floating in clear preservative fluid. She had the faintly dishevelled air of someone who had been busily engrossed in her work for a very long time, even though it was still so early in the morning that most of Blackmoon’s staff had not even begun shifts for the day yet. 

 

“Captain Jade.” She sounded wary, but the naked fear of the previous day was no longer there. Before Mara could say anything the woman blurted, quickly, with the rapid cadence of someone who had reminded herself that she had something to say and needed to make sure it was said at all costs and at the earliest opportunity, “I’m sorry I interrupted your training time yesterday. I knew the sector was off limits but I had no idea it was because - because of that. Because of you. And the others. Being there, I mean. Anyway, I apologise.” She stopped, flushing a dull red under her brown skin.

 

Mara almost smiled, but decided against it. “Don’t worry about it.”

 

“Is there something I can do for you?”    

 

“Actually, there is.” She slipped the vial out of her pocket and held it out. “I need this analysed.” 

 

The doctor snapped a fresh glove onto her hand before taking it. “Looks human, or very close,” she mused, holding it to the light and turning it slowly. “No preservatives, no anti-coagulants that I can tell, which means it’s fairly fresh-drawn…” Her entire attitude had changed, cool professionalism displacing the skittery nerviness. Her dark eyes moved from the vial to Mara, and lingered for a brief moment on her bandaged upper arm. 

 

“What am I looking for?” she asked carefully. “Something in particular? Or just anything that shouldn’t be there?” 

 

“Second one.”

 

The woman nodded, thoughtfully. “That’s easy enough. As luck would have it,” she said, with elaborate casualness, “I’ve just recalibrated most of my scopes. Every time I do that I have to run a few samples through them, just as control tests, you know. The results don’t need to be filed for those, so I normally just use my own blood or re-run samples I’ve already tested.”         

 

A moment of tacit understanding passed between them, and the doctor rose several notches in Mara’s estimation. Her Force-sense radiated sincerity, and there were reserves of both considerable intelligence and deep compassion there. For whatever reason, she was willing to do what Mara needed - and had even offered to do it discreetly without having to be asked.  

 

“I understand your situation has changed since Karrde got involved.” Mara kept her tone light, almost conversational. “Who do you report to now, Doctor?”

 

She had guessed that it was a test, Mara could tell that immediately, but the other woman didn’t hesitate. “Dr Kest’s assignment reports go directly to her. I have a backlog of work to complete for the Obroa-Skai Research Consortium, and that data, when it’s assembled, will go to them. Captain Karrde may ask me what he will about his vornskrs and I will answer to him. My research, though,” she said, drawing out every word, “is my own, and I report it only to whom I choose. Sometimes that means reporting it to no-one at all.”

 

“Not to your backers?”

 

The doctor laughed, a little ruefully. “I have none. Not any more.” 

 

There was a wealth of meaning in those few words and Mara sensed that she would have liked to have said much more, but she did not.

 

“How shall I reach you when this is done?” she asked. “It won’t take long.”

 

Mara passed her the tiny microchip that channelled her private comm frequency. It was technology that she had first used in the Imperial Palace; Karrde had discovered the manufacturer on a MidRim world and within weeks had ensured every member of his crew had one. Used correctly, it would block any transmission surveillance that the NRI might have in place on Blackmoon, but she did not plan on telling the doctor that. However, to Mara’s surprise, recognition flashed across the woman’s face as she picked it up, and she fitted it into the back of her commlink in a deft, practiced motion that made it even more obvious that it was not the first time she’d used such a thing. And she was a medical researcher… 

 

“You worked for the Imperial Research Consortium,” Mara said. It wasn’t a question. 

 

“I did.” Her face sagged a little; echoes of guilt, pain, and terror ripping powerfully through her Force-sense. “For a very long time.” She forced a smile. “And a long time ago.”

 

Mara nodded. A whisper of kinship rippled across the space between them; there was something very like empathy in the woman’s dark eyes, the look of one former Imperial slave recognizing another.

 

On impulse, Mara reached out her hand. “Thank you for doing this, Doctor…Imani?” 

 

The other woman smiled, and shook it. “My name is Kyah,” she said. “And you’re welcome.” 


	8. Dies Cast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Calm before the storm(s)...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I deeply appreciate all the kudos votes and patience as this long and complex plot plays itself out. So far it's been a lot of setup and not much action, but as will become apparent from this chapter, that's about to change in a fairly major way as all the pieces fall into their various places. 
> 
> Comments, as ever, welcome. Thanks for reading.

She wasn’t late, but Mara was the last to enter the briefing room, thanks entirely to the directions Corran had left her - if they could even be dignified with the term. She would, she reflected sourly, have actually been late had it not been for a slightly harried-looking Twi’lek woman with ornately decorated lekku (that were somewhat at odds with her somber NR Starfighter Command fatigues) who had reached the hidden entrance only steps before her and saved her the trouble of finding the equally hidden access panel.  

 

Karrde - who she would have wagered had been the first one there - was focused on the datapad in his hands, glancing up only briefly to nod at her as she slid into the seat beside him. To almost anyone but her he would have looked as immaculate as ever, but Mara could see a distinctive round bruise under his collarbone, almost but not entirely hidden by the collar of his tunic, and the slightly unnatural posture he’d adopted ensuring a specific section of his torso did not touch the back or armrest of his chair.  

 

“Busy night?” She didn’t bother hiding her smirk, and had the satisfaction of seeing an almost imperceptible shift in the set of his jaw and the faintest hint of colour at his neck, though he didn’t reply. He couldn’t know about Aves letting slip over breakfast that Shada’s cabin hadn’t been slept in the previous night.

 

The Twi’lek woman had joined the group seated opposite - even had they not all been wearing squadron insignia patches Mara would have recognised them. A Gamorrean with a translator and speaker set into his throat, a Thakwash who only just managed to look at ease in his uniform, a blond cyborg, and a boyishly handsome human instantly recognisable from a thousand Imperial propaganda films, whose hologenic good looks were marred by a jagged scar cutting across his face: it could only be Wraith Squadron, Wedge Antilles’ brainchild of several years previous, the flying gang of misfits that had against all odds proved their worth. 

 

“Captain Jade, good day.” The scarred pilot - who was wearing command insignia - nodded at her courteously. “We are honoured to have you here.” 

 

Garik Loran. Mara remembered snippets of the ridiculous propaganda holos he had featured in as a young child, when she herself had been barely a few years older. ‘The Face,’ they had called him then. Their eyes met and for a second a thread of the same connection hummed between them as Mara had felt from Kyah Imani. _Slaves of the Empire_ , she thought. _Look at us now._

 

There was no way Loran could have known what she was thinking, but he smiled at her, and in his smile was empathy and sadness and apology and admiration and definite awe all at the same time. He was an actor, and a good one, but if the smile had been a performance it was a very convincing one. 

 

Karrde murmured under his breath, “He’s a rabid fan. Don’t be surprised if he asks for an autograph later - he’s not even fazed by your…other admirer.” She shot him a sideways glare and his lips twitched in a half-smile of, _payback’s no fun, is it?_

 

“Captain Karrde, can we begin?” Loran said. Karrde nodded, instantly all business. “I’ll cede the floor, then.”

 

He tapped at a panel, and a screen on the wall to their right flickered to life, bringing the face of Iella Wessiri into view. Mara had last seen her at the party celebrating her engagement to Wedge Antilles, and the radiant laughing tipsy-happy woman she remembered was now the image of composed authority, in NRI high command robes with her golden hair neatly braided back.         

 

“Thank you all for gathering at such short notice.” Her soft, almost melodious voice was brisk and businesslike. “Captain Jade, I was relieved to hear you were not seriously injured on Ororos, and I am glad to see you recovered.” She smiled, and Mara found she could return it without contrivance. She had grown to like Iella Wessiri; appreciated her razor-sharp mind and her many skills. It took an expert spy to appreciate another, after all.

 

“I am sorry we could not augment Captain Karrde’s intel with any of our own that might have prevented what happened to you and your ship,” Iella went on. “We have agents embedded on Ororos, but what they have been able to tell us corresponded with Captain Karrde’s sources. Clearly all of us were somewhat behind the times.”  

 

Mara shrugged. “It could have been worse.” She would not, absolutely would not mention Skywalker.   

 

Thankfully, neither did Iella, though there was a knowing look in her seafoam-blue eyes that made Mara grit her teeth. “Indeed. However, we did gain something from the attack - thanks entirely to you and your pilot droid, I should say. Commander?”

 

Loran pressed more buttons, and a second screen came to life on the far side of the room. A series of images flashed across it in quick succession: the ones Mara recognised as the ones her Veeone unit, Slips, had managed to capture of the convoy over Ororos. Several featured prominent identifying markings; others were less clear, but still of good enough quality to easily identify the make and model of each ship in them. 

 

“These are, at a conservative estimate, roughly four dozen more leads than we had a few days ago,” Iella said. “We got to work on them immediately, with some useful input from Captain Karrde, of course. The upshot is this: the convoy has split ranks, as we might have expected. Ships matching these have been sighted in three locations in the last 12 standard hours: Tatooine, Kuat space, and Arkanis, from which we are reliably informed they will be departing in two standard days for - ”

 

“- for Ryloth,” Karrde finished. “My contacts tell me the same.”

 

The Twi’lek Wraith Squadron pilot had stiffened visibly in her chair. Mara noticed she was gripping the armrests so tightly that her fingernails were on the verge of piercing the fabric. 

 

Iella’s expression had hardened. “It confirms our initial intelligence - patchy as it was - was sound. It seems clear now that we are dealing with a syndicate, operating on multiple worlds and dealing in illegal merchandise on a dangerous scale.”

 

Face Loran had a hand in the air, but she gestured at him to wait, and he lowered it.  

 

“I have assumed responsibility for tracking the ships on Arkanis,” Karrde said. “I’m sure you won’t take this as a slight on your or your people’s undoubted capabilities when I say I am confident I can find out more about unusual happenings in that part of the galaxy than NRI can.”

 

“No slights taken, Captain,” Iella said, and there was even a hint of something that might have been amusement in her eyes. “Your abilities are legendary, and we thank you for your assistance, which is, as always, invaluable.” 

 

Karrde’s half-bow was both expansive and deferential and Mara made a face; it was common knowledge that Karrde’s Federation of Independent Traders had allied with the New Republic at considerable financial gain to him, but the NRI clearly thought it had been worth every credit and neither Iella nor Leia Organa-Solo begrudged the expense. It had probably not hurt his cause that two of the Republic’s most vaunted generals thoroughly approved of Karrde, though Mara knew both Iella Wessiri and Leia Organa-Solo better than to believe any professional decisions they made would have been entirely dictated by their husbands’ opinions.       

 

“Wraiths, you’re going to Kuat,” Iella said. “According to our latest reports, there are six transport freighters accompanied by a dozen gunships, just sitting in space near the shipyards on the orbital ring - where they are legally permitted to be, I should point out, which is why the Kuati authorities have made no move to impound them or even question their pilots. They have sent shuttles to the spaceport on the Drive Yards with at least 30 pilots and crew aboard; whereabouts of those 30, currently unknown. Face?”

 

Loran said, “As I understand it, Captain Karrde and General Solo drew up a treaty with the Ororos Governor dictating terms for Ororos’ admittance to the Republic.” He looked at Karrde for confirmation and received an affirmative nod. “These ships - the gunships - weren’t mentioned. Just the fact that they were in Ororos space is a violation of the treaty. That’s legal grounds to arrest the captains and bring in the ships in, isn’t it?”

 

A female human pilot with jet-black hair in intricate beaded braids and skin so dark it was almost black added, “There’s also the fact that they fired on Captain Jade’s ship without initiating dialogue in the absence of immediate threat, which removes any protections they might have legally for a retaliatory attack. It’s a clear violation of rules of engagement, which is also grounds to bring them in.”

 

“All true,” Iella said. “But it’s become clear to us that we’re still working in a maze, with lots of blind corners, and from what Captain Karrde and Mara - Captain Jade - told us before the Ororos incident, there are layers to this, buried trails and front groups. It all needs to come down - all of it - but however we hit this, it needs to be done right, or all we’ll have to show for it are a few rescues and some middlemen, and the operation will regroup elsewhere and carry on. We can’t allow that. So that means foregoing some easy arrests for information and a later, greater payoff, which is what we’re going to do on Kuat.”     

 

Both Wraiths nodded, conceding the point.  

 

“Flight Officer Sarkin,” Iella said. 

 

A blond human female in the second row sat a little straighter upright. “Yes, Ma’am?” 

 

“My husband has told me many stories about Wraith Squadron, including the origin of its name. Do you remember what you said about wraiths, a few years ago?” 

 

She looked slightly startled, but nodded.

 

“On this mission especially: be the dark things that come in the night, be phantoms and monsters to those that would do this. Be wraiths in truth. You’ll never find more worthy targets.”   

 

Several of them, Mara saw, had clearly already guessed what Iella was about to tell them, but she said it anyway. “We have not yet confirmed what merchandise is being shipped,” she said. “But we have reason to believe that it is the kind of trade we have been working since the fall of the Empire to eradicate for good.”

 

There was a moment of absolute silence, then Iella said, “Dia.”

 

The Twi’lek pilot looked up, even through her visible distress clearly wondering why she had been addressed so informally. “Ma’am?”

 

“If you wish, you have a free pass. No questions asked, no honour lost.”

 

She had gone very pale, but when she spoke her voice was clear and decisive. “No, my lady. I will stay with my squadron. As you said: we will never have more worthy targets.”

 

The blond pilot, Sarkin, who was beside her, took her hand. Mara couldn’t help noticing that Face Loran seemed to wish he’d got there first.   

         

“Commander Loran,” Iella said. “You and your squadron have briefing files awaiting you in your own ops chamber. You have very little time to finalise your strike plan: you need to depart as soon as possible or risk your quarry slipping through our fingers. We do not know how long they intend to stay on Kuat, though logically it must be at least another day for the ships to refuel to their lowest spaceworthy capacity; longer if they intend to refuel completely. Any questions?”

 

There were none.

 

“Wraiths dismissed,” Iella said. “Clear skies, and may the Force be with you.”

 

The pilots filed silently out of the room, though Iella Wessiri’s face remained on the screen. When the door had slid shut behind the last of them - the huge Thakwash who had had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the crossframe - Iella looked at Mara and Karrde and sighed, a little of her official veneer melting away to reveal traces of tiredness in her face. 

 

“Mara,” she said. “I hate to ask this of you, but are you fit to fly?

 

“I am,” Mara said. “The _Fire_ isn’t, not for lack of effort by the mechanics here. Why? I’m due to leave for Tatooine soon, but if Antilles and Darklighter are already there and Corran, Klivian and Janson are joining them…”

 

Her mind refused to form his name. Karrde had said he was on a mission of his own - whatever that meant - so she didn’t have to. And yet a vivid image of blue eyes and a wry, warm farmboy smile rose in front of her eyes for a split second before she could banish it, and the flush of heat low down inside her lingered far, far too long.

 

Iella sighed again. “They're there - well, Corran isn’t, he’s joining the rest of Rogue Squadron on the _Wayfarer_ \- but the situation is quite a bit more complicated than just one missing Governor and these Ororos ships.” 

 

And at that, something that had been at the back of Mara’s mind since her conversation with Karrde the previous day began to make sense. “Is that why your husband is on a rescue mission he’s laughably overqualified for?” she asked. “It doesn’t take a General and a third of Rogue Squadron to track down one missing man who isn’t even affiliated with the Republic, even if he is making wild claims about Thrawn.”   

 

Karrde and Iella exchanged looks. 

 

“It’s not just Thrawn,” Iella admitted. “Don’t get me wrong, most of what’s in the man’s transmissions is raving gibberish. What you’d hear at closing time in a bar from the worst of the drunks. But there are some snippets that the governer of a tiny Independent system simply shouldn’t know.” 

 

Karrde counted off on his fingers. “Baron Fel. The full names and highly classified code names of three Imperial loyalist Rebels who vanished from Commenor after Yavin, escaping a war crimes tribunal that would almost certainly have found them guilty on multiple charges. And…” he looked back at Iella.

 

“And my husband’s sister.” Iella rubbed her eyes briefly as Mara raised an eyebrow. Wearily, she went on, “There aren’t many people who know that Wynssa Starflare’s real name is Syal Antilles, and she is Wedge’s sister. He hasn’t seen or heard from her since Fel rejoined the Iceheart.”   

 

“It’s worth mentioning this was information even I didn’t know,” Karrde said dryly. 

 

“The Antaran governor mentions her by both names. He knows something,” Iella said. “That was enough for Wedge. He's desperate to find her, or any trace of her.”

 

“The General is in Mos Espa,” Karrde said, with audible distaste. “A spaceport even less prepossessing than Mos Eisely, which is saying something. Our mutual friend Moranda has told him as much as she knows, and in her wisdom, wasted no time leaving the planet after having done so. Her transport left about an hour ago.” 

 

Mara smiled slightly. “That sounds like Moranda.” 

 

“Quite. Lt Darklighter, of course, knows the area, and as I understand it is the sole reason they have not been recognised or simply shot for getting in someone’s way. The odds of both will increase drastically when Majors Janson and Klivian join them, though I am sure that between them all they will manage to stay alive.” 

 

Iella, far from taking offense, was laughing softly, and Mara was reminded once more of why she liked her. 

 

“They’ll manage, somehow,” she said, simultaneously fond and wry. “They always seem to.” Then, her expression turning serious again, she continued, “We have Wes and Hobbie’s co-ordinates for where the Ororos ships landed, and it matches intel Moranda has been sending us for weeks now about what we thought was just a small-scale local operation. Someone trying to rebuild what the Hutts had going for so long.”

 

“It’s a good location,” Karrde admitted. “Speaks to local knowledge, certainly.” He keyed in a sequence on the input pad beside him and a holo of Tatooine materialised in front of them, projecting from and above a small white plinth in the centre of the room. “There is Mos Eisely, and there, Mos Espa,” he said, gesturing to the settlements as their names appeared in small neat letters beside them. “That,” he said, swivelling the image, “Is the encampment where the Ororos ships have landed.”

 

It was a patch of ground surrounded by high, forbidding-looking mountains, nearly equidistant between all of the visible settlements on the map, and nowhere near Mos Espa at all. 

 

“Wonderful,” Mara murmured. There was nowhere nearby to land a ship, no way to approach via ground transport that she could see without being glaringly visible. 

 

“Aside from being remote and possessing no resources or features to draw locals there for any reason, it is also the stuff of local legend,” Karrde went on. “It is said to be haunted by violent spirits, and bring terrible harm to any who dare venture there.” 

 

“Convenient.”

 

“For the inhabitants of that encampment right now, most certainly.” 

 

“Well,” Mara said, “Before I can start figuring out how to get to the encampment, I’ll need a way to get to the planet.”   

 

“That, we can help with,” Iella said. “Leia’s authorised a ship for you - I know it’s not as good as your own, but it’s one of the better ones we have for something like this.” A series of images and specs appeared on the opposite screen. “It used to be a simple escort shuttle, but we - well, Han and Wedge and Lando - retrofitted it.” 

 

The ship Mara was looking at was a sleek grey craft, with modifications far more elegently incorporated than she would have expected from anything Solo had had a hand in working on. “It’s now got a hyperdrive to match yours, six extra laser cannons and you don’t need an astromech to fly it if you don’t want one.” 

 

Mara nodded in reluctant approval. It was nowhere near the ship the _Fire_ was, but it was an impressive craft for what it was. “It’ll do,” she said. “Thanks.” 

 

Iella smiled, visibly relieved. “You’re welcome. I’m glad she’ll work for you. Her name is _Shikara,_ it’s a name of a preybird from some world or the other. She’s waiting for you in the docking bay next to the _Wild Karrde_.” 

 

“You’ll also have a landspeeder waiting for you on-planet,” Karrde said, and there was an odd edge to his voice that made Mara instantly suspicious, as did the fact that he was suddenly carefully avoiding her eyes as he spoke and looking at Iella instead. “Given the remoteness of the encampment, and the logistical impossibility of you using Mos Eisely or Mos Espa as a base if you want to maintain any semblance of a low profile, there’s only one option.” 

 

She knew before he said it, but couldn’t find the right words. So she watched in dry-mouthed silence as the floating map of Tatooine shifted slightly and a new dot appeared, nestled in the shadow of a mountain range a few kilometres from her target. 

 

“That, as I understand it, is Obi-wan Kenobi’s old home, and Skywalker’s current base. He has secured a landspeeder for you, and will protect your ship while you’re on planet from the Jawa and Tusken scavengers.” 

 

Mara opened her mouth, but almost immediately closed it again. There was no logical reason to oppose the arrangement. Every tactical neuron in her brain agreed with the logic of avoiding Mos Eisely and Mos Espa, of having a secure but remote location to land at and proceed on her mission from. She could feel Karrde’s eyes on her, watching for her reaction.

 

“Fine,” she said, finally, keeping her voice as flat as she could. 

 

Iella and Karrde exchanged a brief, meaningful look. “Good luck, Mara,” Iella said, and even through the storm of her thoughts Mara could tell that the sentiment behind the words was genuine. “I’ll be waiting for your comm.”

 

“Thanks, Iella.”

 

Karrde bowed to the screen again. “My lady. Always an honour.” 

 

Iella smiled again, and the screen went dead.         

 

Mara rose from her chair and immediately made for the doors, willing her emotions away, into the tiny boxes at the back of her mind where they could be managed and repressed. _You don’t want to see him, but you have to_ , she told herself, but the words rang hollow and instantly the tiny dreaded voice said, mockingly, _Liar_. _You want to see him. Much, much too badly for comfort._

 

She punched the door access panel, much too hard, but before it opened Karrde was there at her side. 

 

“You’re ready for this?” 

 

She nodded mutely.

 

“Good.” For the first time that morning she noticed how troubled he still looked. “You’ll be leaving just before we will.”

 

“Arkanis?” 

 

“Eventually. Perhaps.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Commenor first.”   

 

She frowned. “Why?”

 

“Several reasons. It’s where we were before here. Where Chin was most likely poisoned. And where I will find out what I need to know before I attempt to find answers anywhere near Ryloth or Arkanis.”

 

Mara knew exactly what - or, to be more precise, who - he meant. “Didn’t know they were on Commenor.”

 

“They’re not. Not yet. They’ll arrive at about the same time as the _Wild Karrde_ will.” 

 

“Is Chin…”

 

“Not stable enough to travel. He’s staying here. As are Sturm and Drang, with the good doctor, who might just prove useful as more than merely a pet minder.” 

 

“If you say so.” Mara kept her tone detached. For reasons she couldn’t quite explain, she did not want even Karrde to know that she’d asked Kyah Imani to test her blood that morning. “I need to get ready,” she said. 

 

Karrde nodded. “Clear skies. Keep me posted.”

 

“You too.” As she made to leave, he called her name and she looked back; there was an expression on his face she didn’t know how to interpret. “What?”

 

He stroked his beard. “I rarely offer you advice, because you so rarely need it. But I will say this: don’t refuse Skywalker’s help if it’s offered. As you and I both know it will be.” 

 

Mara’s hands clenched into fists before she could stop herself; she made herself unclench them and forced herself to speak evenly. “I don’t need his help.”

 

“Need? No.” Karrde’s grey eyes gleamed. “But you make a good team.”

 

Small, tightly sealed compartments of emotion began to split at their seams. Mara could feel her breathing grow shallower. A surge of pure self-preservation over adrenaline roared through her and she was only distantly aware that she was walking away from him, her eyes fixed to the repeating pattern of moving floor panels under her feet as she strove to calm her mind. 

 

Through the maelstrom, her commlink beeped. 

 

It was a simple three-word message, transmitted through a channel she’d activated just that morning. 

 

‘ALL CLEAR. -KI’   

 


	9. Shadows and Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things come to a head on Tatooine, and Mara and Luke have A Conversation...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long and kind of intense chapter. TRIGGER WARNING for graphic depictions of violence and sexual assault (against peripheral unnamed character(s) )
> 
> As ever: feedback and comments welcome. Thanks for reading.

 

_Who is the third who walks always beside you?_

_When I count, there are only you and I together_

_But when I look ahead up the white road_

_There is always another one walking beside you_

_Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded_

_I do not know whether a man or a woman_

_—But who is that on the other side of you?_

-T.S. Eliot, _The Waste Land_

 

Mara had spent most of the hyperspace jump to Tatooine checking for faults in the shuttle she’d been given. It was systematic, analytical work, and it helped her refocus. _Shikara_ , aside from being armoured to the point of ridiculousness for a craft of her size, was, she’d found, a good ship, fast and efficiently modified. Han Solo’s hand was apparent in the hyperdrive, an improvised riveted-together assembly of component parts from up to five separate drives that she could see, though a less manic mind - probably Antilles’ - had at some point intervened to strip away some of the more outrageous mods so that the whole thing looked more or less streamlined and - so far - was functioning flawlessly. The enormous double bed in the main cabin - which she still couldn’t look at without rolling her eyes - was in all likelihood a Calrissian contribution, with extravagantly carved posts and eye-searing red sheets of a strange satiny material reminiscent (doubtless intentionally) of high-end lingerie. She’d avoided it entirely, glad of the long deep sleep she’d had in her cabin on the _Fire_. 

 

She dropped out of lightspeed with the twin suns of Tatooine beginning to slip behind the curve of the horizon; she’d calculated the suns would set completely at her destination in just over two standard hours. 

 

The planet was just as Mara remembered it; rolling yellow-ochre dunes split by jagged peaks and crags of sandstone mountain ranges and brittle white crystalline blooms of salt spread out into irregular flats, fading to a blush pink where their edges bled into the sand. She flew as low as she dared, choosing to skirt around larger obstacles instead of going over them. She was far from Mos Eisely and further from Mos Espa, but the Jundland Wastes were far from empty, and she was determined to get to her rendezvous without attracting attention. The _Shikara,_ she had to admit, was far better suited to this furtive low-level skimming over uneven terrain than the _Fire_ would have been; she was smaller, more maneuverable, and had a line of sensors and scanners that wrapped around the entirely of her fuselage, giving Mara a full 360-degree field of vision of her surroundings as well as a view of whatever happened to be directly below her, thanks to yet another targeting scanner that seemed to have been appropriated from a Bladewing bomber. It was, Mara reflected, very obviously a ship put together by three combat pilots. _Male_ combat pilots, she amended sardonically, looking at the outsize weapons targeting grid, bristling with switches and triggers.    

 

Her navcom beeped, and a red bracket appared on her targeting screen, along with the co-ordinates Iella Wessiri had given her. Co-ordinates for Obi-wan Kenobi’s old home, where Luke would be waiting. Skywalker, she reminded herself. Not Luke...

 

A knot had begun to form in the pit of her stomach; she ignored it and focused on the viewscreen filling with the maze of rock spires she was about to guide the _Shikara_ into. She pulled the ship into a wide swoop, skirting the mountainside, and as she brought the nose around it appeared, nestled in a tiny valley backed by near-impenetrable cliffs: a small domed rock hut with one of the ubiquitous Tatooine moisure vaporators beside it. 

 

She didn’t see the X-wing until she was nearly on top of it. Skywalker had hidden it to near-perfection. Backed into a natural cul-de-sac in the rock and shaded by a projecting overhang, a camouflage sheet had been pulled across the nose, leaving an access just wide enough for a person to walk through that would only be visible, she realised, from the doorway of the hut. From any vantage point except that doorway or directly above it, the fighter was completely hidden from view.

 

And, counter to everything his normal patterns of behaviour would have had her expect, he had used no Force illusions. 

 

Disbelieving, Mara eased back her repulsors so she could hover for a moment above the fighter and reached out through the Force for confirmation. Nothing.   

 

Before she had a chance to process more fully what that might mean, Mara caught a flash of movement in the doorway of the hut. Almost in the same moment familar warmth brushed up against the edges of her mind; still faint, still carefully restrained, but it was there and it was unmistakeable, and to her utter dismay her subconscious leapt to embrace it; revelling in it like salve on the edges of a raw, open wound.  

 

He was leaning against the doorjamb, arms folded, a farmer monk in sand-colored pants and boots and a loose, open-necked white tunic with sleeves rolled carelessly to his elbows. Watching the ship with a small, apprehensive smile; but a smile right enough, warm and fond, and she shook her head in wry wonderment at how very typically _Skywalker_ it was to be happy to see her after everything that had happened in the last few days. 

 

She couldn’t help but notice how exhausted he still looked. 

   

There was a space beside his X-wing - he’d obviously cleared it - big enough for the _Shikara,_ but only just, if she were to land it at the right angle to fit beneath the rock ledge that would conceal it from the air. If their positions had been reversed, she might have done it as a challenge: clear just enough room for a perfect landing, not a metre more, and see if the great Master Jedi, vaunted piloting legend, could handle it. 

 

Mara didn’t need access to his mind to know that wasn’t why he’d done it.   

 

From a long ago conversation on a ship-to-ship transmission, his words came back to her. _“I trust you. After all, there isn’t much you can’t do when you want to.”_

 

She rested her hands on the controls and took a breath, reaching out, finding the place of stillness where her fingertips seemed to be reaching through the ship, into it, turning it into an extension of herself. The multiple viewcreens displayed vectors and images of the cliffside, and scrolling trajectories calculated by the ship’s computer, but she ignored them all. Engaged one repulsor, then another; dropped out an engine and powered up a thruster with the lightest of touches. For a moment the overhang loomed, uncomfortably close, almost certain to scrape across her prow - and then the _Shikara_ settled with a sighing hum, her engines cutting neatly one by one, and Mara opened her eyes. She’d have to be outside to see it properly, but she knew already: she’d done it, a precise and squarely-centered landing. 

 

His smile had broadened into a grin, full of pride and the conoisseur’s appreciation of a fine pilot watching another at work. She tried to tamp down the heady rush of pleasure fluttering up inside her at that smile. Dangerous to think about the value of Skywalker’s approbation; it was bad enough knowing she valued it at all. 

 

“They gave you the _Shikara,_ ” he noted as he came forward to greet her. “She’s a good ship.”

 

“Not bad for one of Solo’s projects,” Mara said, and he chuckled. 

 

“Han’s a brilliant pilot. He’s never been a sensible engineer.”

 

“Or an engineer, period.”

 

He gave her a mock-grimace, but the smile still tugged at the edges of it. “Ouch. Harsh, Mara.”

 

“But fair.”

 

He laughed again. “Maybe.”

 

He seemed to have decided not to mention the incident over Ororos or what had happened at Blackmoon at all. Which was fine by her. She began to unload her supplies, neither asking for his help nor stopping him when he began to unfasten hatches and lift out containers alongside her. 

 

“That was some nice flying,” he said, taking a crate from the top of the pile in her arms before it slid off. 

 

“You were expecting anything different?”

 

His eyes gleamed as the corners of his mouth quirked up, and her stomach flip-flopped alarmingly. “Never.”

 

She looked quickly away, busying herself with a loose webbing strap. 

 

The first of the twin suns had begun to sink beneath the horizon when they finished, and the _Shikara_ had been safely hidden behind an identical camouflage sheet to the one protecting the X-wing. There hadn’t been much to unload; she had no intention of staying long on this dustbowl of a world. Skywalker’s reserve and shields were still firmly in place; he was obviously preoccupied, but he was still Skywalker, and he’d lost none of his usual solicitousness. 

 

“It’s not as good as what you’re used to, but it’s best for this kind of terrain,” he said, almost apologetically, as she ran a critical eye over the speeder he’d found for her. It was an older T-44, as weatherbeaten as everything else on the planet, but she knew he’d have checked it meticulously from nose to exhaust ports.    

 

“Thanks,” she said, a little stiffly. “I appreciate it.”

 

“You’re welcome.” He grabbed a handful of tools and crouched down beside the other vehicle parked in the courtyard: a battered, laughably unsafe-looking old speeder bike which he’d clearly been tinkering with since he’d arrived on planet. “What?” he asked, a little defensively, catching sight of her expression. 

 

“Nothing.” She couldn’t resist adding, “Are you planning to ride that, or have you taken up modern sculpture?”

 

“Very funny.” 

 

There were cakes of biofuel stacked in a sunken stone-edged pit in the courtyard. When she re-emerged from the hut after sending Karrde a message, setting out her bedroll in the sleeping alcove of the single main room (Skywalker had claimed to have been sleeping in the basement workroom) and using the fresher, he’d lit a fire in the pit and was sitting cross-legged beside it. Not meditating, but watching the final moments of the sunset. A cookpot sat in the embers, steaming gently.    

 

“Wedge left you this.” He passed her a datacard. “Moranda lifted it from one of her marks. Says Karrde will want to see it.”

  

“What’s on it?”

 

He shrugged. “Haven’t looked. And anyway, Wedge says it’s encrypted. Ghent may have to look at it before anyone else can.”

 

She slipped the card into her jacket pocket. It was getting colder; the last sliver of the second sun had sunk out of sight behind the dunes. There was an odd heaviness in the air, like the unnatural stillness that presaged a storm, but the sky, which had darkened to the colour of old blood, was cloudless.

 

“What’s your plan?” he asked.

 

“I can’t make an approach while it’s light,” she said. “2 or 3 hours after midnight will be when it’s darkest. It’ll also be when they’ll have their security and surveillance on high alert, if they’re smart, but I can get around that.”

 

He nodded. “You’ve seen it?” he asked, carefully.

 

There was a strange edge to his voice, but his shields were firmly in place and he was staring into the flames, his face giving nothing away. 

 

“Only holos. Doesn’t look like there’s much to see. Have you?” 

 

“Yes. From the mountains. I can - ” He stopped abruptly, and bit his lip.

 

 _I can show you._ That was what he’d been about to say. Such a natural logical thing to do - and a shiver ran down her spine that had nothing to do with the chill of the evening air. The mental connection between them had been there for so long, it was now only natural for him to show her what he’d seen that way, mind-to-mind, through that easy fluid connection that didn’t even require him to be near her. She’d resented him for his presence in her mind, and for how effortlessly he was able to slip in and out of her head, but, ever virtuous - though whether that was his farmboy honour or his Jedi saviour morality she didn’t know - he’d never pried, not truly. He’d never taken advantage of her inability to block him out, unlike…

 

Mara’s thoughts swerved violently and instinctively away from the darkness of those memories, from the flesh-crawling horror of remembering Palpatine’s touch on her body and in her mind. 

 

Luke was nothing like that. 

  

And yet, here he was, suddenly reluctant to open up their link even to show her something he’d seen that could help her, and she shivered again at the thought of why that might be. Something that would cause Luke Skywalker to have second thoughts about helping a friend. Skywalker took stupidly dangerous risks to help people all the time, it was what he was known for. He’d charged into deathtraps without thinking twice to protect friends, risked his life and his sanity over and over and over again to help those he loved…

 

Rigidly compartmentalised emotions strained against the barriers she’d locked down on them. The word and all its heavy implications had dropped out of nowhere into her thoughts and sent ripples outward that she could not stop but made herself focus beyond, as she frantically stuffed back the dangerous, ridiculous, impossible feelings back into their boxes. If only they would stay there…  

 

What had he seen in her head that he couldn’t bear to glimpse again? There were, she reflected bitterly, a million and more horrors buried in her memories that he might have seen, that should have been enough to make him flee and never look back. But if it was fear he was feeling, she realised, looking at him with his rigid jaw and haggard, hunted-looking face, it did not seem to be her he was afraid of. He was holding back, holding on, locked away in himself. Guarding against something that must not be allowed to breach the shields. But what? And was he shielding against her, or for her? 

 

Abruptly, vividly, the memory rushed back, in even more detail this time, and she bit back a hiss at the visceral pull of it. Interlocking mats of Blackmoon’s training room floor, digging into her shoulderblades as his weight pressed down on her. The way his belt buckle had pressed into her hip; the sudden shock of his exhalation hot against her neck; the feel of her body arching up into his, trying to fight him off but succeeding only in pressing flush against the hard unyielding muscle of his abdomen, his thighs…

 

Her eyes flew open and she gave her head a quick, violent shake, as though it might physically dislodge the memory from her brain. What in seven hells was wrong with her?     

 

Skywalker stood abruptly, and for one terrible moment she thought he’d seen what had been going through her mind, but his expression hadn’t changed - if anything, he seemed to have withdrawn deeper into himself, further away from her. 

 

“There’s food,” he said, gesturing to the cookpot. With a faint smile he added, “I don’t promise it’ll taste good. But you’re welcome to it.” 

 

“I’ll pass,” she said. “But thanks. I’m going to try to get a few hours sleep.” He nodded distractedly; he barely seemed to have heard her. He wandered over to the speeder bike, picked up a hydrospanner, and neither looked back nor said another word as she left the fireside and slipped through the doorway of the hut. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

The Mos Eisley spaceport was, and always had been, one of the most unprepossessing yet vitally important fixtures of the Dune Sea. An isolated outpost in the middle of Tatooine’s endless shifting dunes, no-one, not even the old-timers - who had been there for so long that they were as integral a part of the spaceport as its buildings and hangars - could be sure of how old it was or when it had been built; or, for that matter, why. Nor did they care. Nonetheless, it continued to exist, drawing farmers, traders, scavengers, mercenaries, and others whose downturn of fortunes had brought them to the bleak squalor of the Outer Rim. 

 

Wedge Antilles had never thought he’d set foot in a place so entirely and irredeemably unpleasant as Mos Eisely. That, of course, had been before he’d come to Mos Espa.

 

He’d only been on Tatooine for six days, but it was, as far as he was concerned, six days too many. Even Gavin Darklighter’s company and guidance hadn’t made navigating the filthy, dusty cesspits of Mos Eisely, Bestine and Mos Espa any more pleasant, and having to constantly bite his tongue so as not to offend Gavin too much by insulting what was, after all, his homeworld, was beginning to take its toll on Wedge.  

 

Only the prospect of learning something - anything - about Syal (he could never think of her as Wynssa) had kept him going, and and it was the only thing sustaining him now, in the - he glanced at his chrono - eighth hour of the stakeout that seemed like it would never end. 

   

A few metres away from him, Gavin had fashioned a sort of inverted recliner for himself out of bits and pieces of furniture and was lying on his belly, looking through his macrobinoculars at their target: the house across the street that had last shown signs of activity nearly an entire day before, when their mark, the Antaran governor, had left it, on foot and carrying only a small satchel. They’d taken that as a sure sign that he must return to his safehouse soon, but so far that assumption had proved incorrect. For the hundredth time Wedge wondered if Moranda’s informant had been wrong somehow, but that had not happened in living memory, he conceded reluctantly. You could say many things about Moranda, not all of them complimentary, but her reliability was never in question. Especially since she was now on both Karrde’s and the NRI’s payroll. Moranda was a professional.  

 

Wedge sighed. His own position, in a chair that had seemed the most comfortable of the ramshackle pieces of furniture to be found in the building, was making his lower back hurt, and his right foot was asleep. “I’m getting too old for this,” he murmured to himself. As many times as he’d said it before, this time it might actually be true. 

 

Gavin pretended not to have heard, but the corners of his mouth twitched slightly.   

 

Their stakeout location was, according to Gavin, an abandoned distillery, though Wedge privately thought that might be a somewhat grandiose term to use for what appeared to be a private home with a makeshift moonshine setup that looked both illegal and highly dangerous. The smell of old liquor and cigarras still hung heavy in the air, but the odour was less oppressive on the second floor, where they’d taken up their current positions. On the ground floor, around the remnants of the still, it was still heady enough to have made his head spin when they’d been down there earlier in the day.  

 

His commlink crackled. 

 

“Antilles.”

 

“Checking in, boss. You as bored as we are?” It was Janson’s voice. He and Hobbie had arrived on-planet and gone straight from spending several hours in cockpits to spending several hours sitting in a room. Even Janson’s unflagging cheerfulness was beginning to wilt slightly. 

 

“Probably,” Wedge said. “Are you two sure you’re secure over there?” 

 

The building Wes and Hobbie were in, on the far side of the Antaran governer’s house, was, unlike the distillery, not abandoned. It was a fully functional parts dealership with an upper floor that served as a storage room, which was where the two of them had taken up stations. 

 

“Pretty confident, boss.”

 

“And that’s because…”

 

He could hear the grin in Wes’s voice. “Moranda took care of things.”

 

“Please don’t tell me there’s a parts dealer’s body I’m going to have to explain in my report, Wes. Please don’t tell me that.”

 

“What? No, of course not.” Wes sounded shocked. “He’s just passed out behind his counter downstairs. Moranda started a drinking contest earlier before she left. He’ll be out for a while. I think one of his buddies is under a speeder tarp outside; might be a good idea to check on him at some point, actually.”  

 

Gavin grinned. 

 

“Nothing to report then, I take it?”

 

“Not a thing. Oh, Hobbie’s built an impressive little fort out of duct siding panels, does that count?”

 

“It does not.”

 

“It’s almost a metre high!” 

 

Gavin rolled over onto his back, and started to laugh.

 

“Wes - ”

 

“I know, boss. But honestly, there’s been nothing. Couple of times there’s been shadows behind the window shades on the upper floor but no-one’s come or gone, so it could just be a trick of the light. Not worth us breaking cover for.”

 

Wedge looked at the commlink, thinking hard. An unpleasant feeling had been worrying away at the back of his mind, a certainty that there was something wrong, that there was something they had all overlooked. 

 

He would never be able to explain afterwards why exactly he’d done it, but all at once, he made a decision. Luke would have said it was the Force nudging him, directing him, but whatever it was, he knew what he needed to do.   

 

“Wes. Tell Hobbie to stop building. We’re going in.”

 

Gavin stared at him quizzically.

 

“You sure, boss?”

 

“Yes. Something’s wrong. It’s been almost a whole day since the Governor left. Either he’s been tipped off, or someone got to him before us, but I don’t think he’s coming back. We’re going in. If he’s left something behind that might help us figure out where he’s gone, I want to find it.” 

 

There was a second of silence over the comm, and then Wes said, “All right. That door lock is a piece of junk, more's the better, we’ll be able to get in without attracting too much attention from the neighbours, assuming any of them even care enough to investigate a disturbance. This doesn’t seem like an area with very much civic pride, so I’d bet against that.” All the easy levity had vanished from his voice; he’d shifted seamlessly into the canny soldier who had survived some of the bloodiest campaigns of the Rebellion. 

 

“Good. Looks much the same on this side. Secure the ground floor, we’ll meet at the stairwell. Stun only. Anyone in there, I need them alive and able to answer questions.” 

 

“Affirmative, General. See you in there. Janson out.” 

 

Wedge looked at Gavin. He was already holstering his blaster and checking the body armour beneath the spacer’s gear that they’d all been wearing as part of their cover. Wedge checked the trigger on his own blaster and took a single, deep breath. _Syal_ , he thought. _I’m so close._  

 

“All right,” he said. “Let’s move.” 

 

It was very near dawn; the sky was beginning to lighten faintly but most of Mos Espa was still in darkness, except for a few flickering streetlamps and light filtering through window coverings in a few buildings up and down the street on either side. The noise of drunken arguments spilled out from a tapcafe several buildings away; it would, Wedge thought, provide useful cover.  

 

The door lock was so flimsy it might as well have been entirely decorative. Gavin reversed his grip on his blaster and brought it barrel-first down on the hasp, which gave way with a feeble snap under the impact of the blow. It was an old-fashioned hinged door, and it swung open inwards under its own momentum as Gavin knocked the remains of the lock off it to the ground. Cautiously, blaster at the ready, Wedge slipped inside.  

 

In the darkness of the interior, the smell hit him like a hammer blow and he recoiled instinctively. Beside him, Gavin hastily flung an arm over his face to stifle a cough. Wedge had been in more combat situations that he could count, but he could not remember ever having smelled anything quite like this: a thick, choking combination of burning, of scorched metal, the stink of sewage and sweat and a distinctive, sickening metallic odour that permeated through all the rest and caused a knot of dread to tighten in the pit of his stomach.  

  

Cautiously, he reached for a panel on the wall and depressed a switch. A single light flickered to life. 

 

His first thought was that a grenade had gone off at some very recent point in the room. What little furniture there was - a sofa, a table and a few chairs - lay in splintered, charred pieces on the bare  ferrocrete floor. Scorch marks covered the walls, so many of them that it was impossible to see what the original paint colour was. Interspersed here and there were deep gashes, as though the walls had been subjected to a frenzied vibroblade assault. The cushions and the padding of the couch had been similarly attacked;  the fabric that hadn’t been burned was ripped to ribbons, and stuffing dribbled out of the slits onto the floor.       

 

They moved through the wreckage, stepping with care around the detritus. Suddenly Gavin stopped. 

 

“Look,” he whispered, gesturing with his blaster toward an ominous-looking heap just visible through the archway leading to the next room. 

 

Wedge advanced, slowly. “Cover me,” he ordered, quietly. 

 

Before he was even close enough to tell what species or gender the slumped body was, Wedge knew it was dead. The smell of decay was almost overpowering; the body had obviously been there for some time. It didn’t take a medical expert to determine the cause of death; a jagged-edged, blackened hole gaped in its abdomen, and the robes it was draped in were stiff with dried blood. Wedge forced himself to move closer; and finally the body’s face came into view. It was a human man, with a face that, even under the pallor of death, was sun-tanned and heavily lined. What little hair was visible under the pulled-up hood was a wiry, bristly grey. 

 

“It’s not the Governor,” Wedge said to Gavin, hovering a few paces behind him. He felt a stab of guilt at how relieved he was. If the Governor was not dead, neither were his chances of finding out where Syal was.  

 

“I know him.” Gavin looked slightly ill. “It’s Raes. Raes Cloudrunner. He was working for Moranda.” 

 

“Why would he have been here?”

 

“I don’t know,” Gavin admitted. “He shouldn’t have been.” 

 

They kept moving. Wedge didn’t need to assure Gavin they’d come back for Raes’ body. 

 

There were only two rooms beyond. Both were completely empty, with neither bodies nor furnishing, but the walls of the third were smeared starkly, obscenely, with a mixture of blood and what looked - and smelled - horribly like faeces. Wedge’s revulsion was matched only by his utter incomprehension; not even his wildest conjectures could plausibly explain what he was seeing. 

 

In the third room was a stairwell. Moments after they’d reached it, Hobbie and Wes stepped through the door on the far side, having entered through the back gate. The looks on their faces told Wedge that the rooms they’d walked through had been in much the same condition. 

 

“What the hell is this place?” Hobbie demanded in a low voice. “It looks like a Lothal fighting pit back there. There’s blood everywhere.”

 

“Any bodies?” Wedge asked, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice. 

 

“None. Why? Did you find any?”

 

“One,” Gavin said. “Raes. Moranda’s informant.” 

 

Hobbie swore softly under his breath. 

 

All four of them looked at the dimly lit stairs. The upper floor was almost totally dark. There was a single flickering illuminator bar half hanging off the wall, but nothing else.  

 

“Come on,” Wedge said, hoping his queasiness wasn’t apparent in his voice.      

 

The stairs were treacherously rickety; they creaked and sagged alarmingly with every step, making enough noise to alert any even semi-conscious being on the upper storey to their presence, but Wedge had stopped caring about the element of surprise. They moved quickly to avoid a collapse, and within minutes all except Janson were crowded onto the tiny landing at the top of the stairwell. 

 

“What are you doing?” Hobbie demanded. “Move or the whole thing will cave in under you.”

 

Janson crouched and slid his sleeve over his hand; carefully, making sure his skin didn’t come into contact with it, he picked something up from the corner of a step and then nimbly hopped up to join them.  

 

“Look at this.” He held out his hand, still keeping the fabric of his jacket pulled up. In his palm were three small clear vials. They were empty, but faint powdery traces of their contents still clung to the insides. 

 

“Spice?” asked Gavin, who had never seen the illegal substance before. 

 

“Possibly,” said Wes, who had. “Hard to tell just by looking.” Slipping his blaster into the crook of his arm he extracted a ration bar tin from the pocket of his pants, tipped the contents back into his pocket, then dropped the vials into the tin and snapped it shut. “Lab will tell us more,” he said, and placed it carefully into an inside pocket of his jacket. 

 

The smell was even stronger on the upper floor. Wedge made himself keep moving, taking shallow, quick breaths. Both Hobbie and Gavin had pulled up their collars into makeshift masks over their mouths and noses; Gavin had turned a pale shade of green and was sweating profusely. Wes seemed the least perturbed, but Wedge knew he was simply better at fronting than the others were. 

 

They were in a narrow passage; the house was not as spacious above as it was below, and there were only two doorways, both set at the very end of the passage in a small square alcove. Wes nudged him and gestured wordlessly; Wedge looked down and saw that the floor was littered with dozens more of the small, clear vials, some crushed, as though underfoot, others kicked aside or simply lying there. All were empty. Wedge stepped over them or nudged them aside with his boot as he moved; he did not want whatever traces remained in them to be on his clothes. An absence of crunching or splintering told him the others were doing the same.   

 

One of the doorways was guarded only by a hanging curtain. With the barrel of his blaster, Wedge lifted it cautiously as Hobbie and Wes peered in. 

 

“Nothing,” Hobbie said softly. “Two chairs. More vials everywhere.”

 

“Marks on the walls,” Wes added. “Looks like blaster burn.” 

 

He dropped the curtain and turned to the other door. It looked entirely out of place; a solid dropdown metal door that looked several decades newer than any other part of the building. A similarly new-looking control panel was set into the wall beside it, from which a single red light blinked steadily. 

 

He nodded to Hobbie. “Do it.”

 

Without hesitating, Hobbie drew his vibroblade, raised an arm to shield his face, and plunged the blade straight down into the middle of the panel. A crackle of electricity split the air and a shower of sparks leapt from the wiring, along with a small but thick cloud of smoke. The doors slid noiselessly open, and Wedge stepped through, waving his arm in front of his face to clear the smoke, Wes, Hobbie and Gavin just behind. 

 

He saw it a fraction of a second before them. From somewhere very far away he thought he might have heard Gavin swearing frenziedly. 

 

It was as though he’d been punched, hard and unexpectedly, in the stomach. 

 

The smell in the room was the worst yet; a rank combination of blood, faeces, sweat and decomposition. The only furniture was a huge double-bed, covered in shiny red and black sheets that were so ripped and shredded that, between the damage and their colour, it was possible at first glance to miss the blood that caked them, so much blood that it had dripped and formed huge puddles on the floor. Metal rings had been set into the wall in pairs, one row of them near the ceiling and the other near the floor. Where the bedhead met the wall, the rings had been set directly into the bedframe, two at the head and one at each post at the foot of the bed. 

 

Attached to each of the bedframe rings was a chain, and at the end of each chain was a manacle. They held in place a Twi’lek woman who was not struggling, though her flesh was raw where the mancles had cut into her and her blood stained the metal chains.  

 

Wedge fought to steady his breathing and keep down the bile rising in the back of his throat; he could hear Gavin still swearing, an edge of hysteria in his voice. Wes and Hobbie were frozen in shock. 

 

The woman’s scanty clothing hung in shreds off her body; dimly Wedge recognized the filmy fabric and appearance of a slave dancer’s costume. Her body beneath was a topographical map of violence. It looked as though she had been tortured with a knife; huge long weals had been opened in her skin, and in between them were the raw red tracks of whip marks. Her face was so battered and bruised that it was impossible to make out her features, and her lekku had been slashed so violently they were almost severed in a dozen places. Her throat had been cut in a neat, wide, red line that gaped open like a grotesque smile. The scraps of cloth that hung at her waist and lower down were sodden with blood, and with a surge of particularly violent nausea Wedge realised what had happened to her. 

 

Fighting to gather himself, he looked around, suddenly desperate for a cloth, a sheet, anything to cover her and give her some of the dignity that had been so cruelly, brutally ripped away from her along with her life. Hobbie and Wes, parchment-white and looking as close to vomiting as Wedge himself felt, had moved to the bed and were sawing with their vibroblades at the manacles that held her to the bed. Gavin was frozen to the spot, tears rolling down his cheeks, his eyes wide with abject horror, rocking slowly back and forth.   

 

Wedge took his arm. “Come on,” he said, and heard the tremor in his own voice. “Help me find a sheet for her. Come on!” He pulled hard, and Gavin stumbled into motion, wiping the tears from his face with jerky motions of his right hand. Wedge blundered into the other room. No sheets but - his eye fell on the curtains, which had some slash marks, but only a few.

 

By the time he and Gavin brought the curtains back, Wes and Hobbie had cut the woman free. Somehow, between them, they managed to slide one of the curtains underneath her desecrated body, and drape the other on top, creating a shroud that covered her completely. Without a word, Wes lifted it off the bed - she had been small and slight enough that even with the added bulk of the curtains, he could lift her easily - and made for the door. 

 

They carried both bodies to the house Wedge and Gavin had used as their stakeout vantage point, and placed them on the floor. Dawn had broken fully, and the sky was a dull grey, streaked with pale pink; the curve of the first sun was beginning to rise above the horizon. Breathing heavily, his head still spinning, Wedge tried to marshall his thoughts - he needed to figure out what to do next, the other three were relying on him for further orders - and was interrupted by the loud shrilling bleep of his commlink. 

 

“What?” he asked hoarsely, flicking it on.

 

“Wedge?” It was Luke, and even though his own haze of distress Wedge was aware that he, too, sounded slightly more unsteady than usual. “I’ve found your Governor.”   

 

 

  

* * *

 

 

 

She thought it was a dream, initially. 

 

She had had all too many similar ones since she’d left the Emperor’s service - though ‘service’ was no longer a word she used to describe what she had gone through for all those years. There was noise, and violence, and screaming, and above everything the nerve-shredding, thought-scrambling rush of panic - fearful, frantic, helpless panic, echoing through her mind until it drowned out everything else. It locked her in place for what could have been a moment or could have been an hour until she managed to focus enough to realise that while she was asleep, she wasn’t dreaming - and the emotions she was feeling were not her own, but were leaking in to her subconscious through a barrier that had been allowed to slip by just the merest fraction, but even that small lapse had been enough.  

 

_Luke._

 

_Luke!_

 

Mara woke with a start, and the chaos of her mind resolved itself into the very real, very tangible sound of screams. Disorientation gave way to hyperawareness, and before she could formulate a conscious thought she was flinging back the top layer of her bedroll and stumbling out, drawn by a frantic pull that overrode every other instinct and impulse.

 

The night air was much, much colder than she’d expected, and it hit her like a slap to the face, but she checked only momentarily. The fire in the pit had burned itself down to a few scattered flames in a sea of glowing red embers, and the cookpot was gone, but she barely registered any of that. 

 

Skywalker lay on a bedroll spread directly on the sand, just metres from the fire. He was asleep - she could see that immediately - but his body was racked with convulsions, so violent that for a moment she was reminded of the images she’d seen from the Emperor’s throne room on the second Death Star, when he’d been tortured with Force-lighting for several long, agonzing moments. There was no Emperor in the desert now, and no lighting, but he was screaming, and writhing in his sleep, and his agony echoed through the Force so vividly that she found herself reflexively dropping to her knees, grabbing his arms, shaking him hard, as desperate to make the terrifying uncontrollable echoes in her mind stop as she was to end his distress, to make whatever was hurting him go away. 

 

He woke with a strangled gasp, and the eyes that stared wildly into hers were hugely dilated; for a second he seemed almost not to recognise her. Then awareness returned in a sudden rush, and his shoulders heaved as he drew a series of long, shuddering breaths. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he croaked, as soon as he was able to speak. 

 

“Sorry - Skywalker, what the hell was that?” Anxiety sharpened her voice into a far angrier tone than she’d intended, but secretly she was almost relieved; asperity might hide the true depth of her concern.     

 

“Nightmare.” He straightened up, rubbing his head hard, rumpling his already wildly tousled hair. Mara found herself fighting back a wild desire to reach out and smooth it down, and smooth away the deep furrows in his brow while she was at it, and wondered if they were both going insane. 

 

“Nightmare?” she repeated incredulously. “I have nightmares, Skywalker. They dont…do that.” 

 

She hadn’t meant to admit it, but she saw the flash of understanding in his eyes, though his own lingering fear and horror, and bit her lip hard. 

 

“I’ve been having them for a while.” He reached for the robe he’d flung away from him in his wild flailing; Mara realised with a start and a flare of heat deep inside her that he was naked from the waist up. He wrapped it around himself and huddled into it, though she sensed it wasn’t from the night’s cold he was seeking protection.

 

“Are they always…”

 

“Like that?” He looked embarrassed, staring down at his crossed legs instead of at her. “Yes. I’ve - been trying to make them stop…”

 

“You mean, you’ve been trying to stop yourself sleeping.” At once, the meaning of his haggard face and the shadows under his eyes that had seemed burned in place even when he’d found her on Ororos became abundantly clear.   

 

He nodded shortly. “I couldn’t stop them any other way. I tried. I tried everything.” 

 

Her heart gave a sudden squeeze. She’d never, ever seen him look so vulnerable - so strangely lost. At once, despite the three-day stubble on his jaw, he looked years younger, and she winced at the intensity of the sudden desire welling up in her to pull him into her arms and hold him.

 

Fortunately, he didn’t notice. 

 

“I tried mediating,” he said slowly. “It…made it worse. I kept slipping into visions. Bad ones.” 

 

“If they were anything like what you were dreaming just now - ”

 

“They’re worse.” 

 

A long moment of silence, and he went on, reluctantly, “I can’t pin anything down. They’re not clear. It’s so frustrating - ” His hand, the real one, clenched into a fist. “I haven’t had visions this vague since Bespin. All I see - ” he faltered for a second “- is flashes. Fire. Sand. Shadows. Blood.” He rubbed his eyes, hard. “I see the twin suns. And I see a dark shadow, and I know it’s a being strong in the Force - unbelievably strong. I feel anger, more anger than I’ve ever felt before. It’s angry - so angry it’s lost control. And I see a lightsaber blade, and I hear the screams of beings dying.”

 

He finally met her eyes, and the look on his face was so bleak that it made her afraid. 

 

“Mara - I - I’m afraid it’s me. That I’m seeing visions of my own destiny.”   

 

“No.” The word was out of her mouth before she could stop it. Quickly she went on, “No. That can’t be. You’re not losing control. You’re using the Force _less_ , if anything - your X-wing - ”

 

He managed a faint smile. “You noticed.” 

 

 _Of course I noticed_ , she thought in exasperation. _It’s you who doesn’t see what’s right under your nose._

 

Aloud she said, “And the Praxeum - you’ve been away for what, three weeks? Four?”

 

Slightly abashed, he muttered, “Four and a half.” 

 

“A year ago you would never have dreamed of doing that. Leaving someone else - who is it, Streen? Clighal? Kyle? - in charge for so long. Because obviously everything would fall apart if you weren’t around to do everything.” 

 

He was blushing - actually blushing, faintly, but visibly. Mara forced down another wild urge to take him in her arms and run her fingers through his sand-and-gold hair.

 

“I left them all in charge,” he admitted. “A leadership committee, I guess you could say. Kirana Ti as well - she’s come so far in the last year.”

 

Mara raised an eyebrow. “I never thought I’d see the day,” she said, dryly. “The omniscient Jedi Master relinquishing control.”

 

His blush deepened, and he looked into the embers as though maintaining eye contact with them was of vital importance. “I don’t know why you’re so surprised,” he mumbled. “You’re the one who kept telling me I was playing the demigod too much.”  

 

It wasn’t often that Mara Jade found herself at a loss for words, but she found herself completely, utterly unable to think of anything to say. Finally, she managed a, “What?”

 

“Well, you did.” Out of nowhere he smiled at her, a crooked, slightly mischievous smile that lit up his tired, gaunt face. “You were right,” he went on quickly, seeing her open her mouth to speak. “You were right. About me trying to do everything. And not trusting people enough.”

 

“I also told you not to trust certain people too much,” she said. Her voice sounded odd even to her. Of all the ways she’d imagined this conversation would have gone - if they ever had it - this was the absolute last thing she would have predicted.    

 

“Well.” A deep sadness had crept into his eyes, along with a pain so profound that she instantly wished she hadn’t said it. “You were right about that too.” 

 

The silence this time was loaded with the weight of things both said and unsaid. They hadn’t spoken about Kyp Durron in over a year, and their last conversation had not been pleasant. 

 

“I’m sorry,” she surprised herself by saying. “I wasn’t - well, I wasn’t very tactful about what happened with Kyp.”

 

“Don’t apologise,” he said softly. “I told you. You were right.” 

 

And even though both their shields were up, the thrum of connection that resonated between them went so deep - and so intimate - that Mara found herself scrambling for words to say to put some distance back between them.

 

“Is that why you came here?” she blurted. 

 

“Yes.” He looked troubled again. “I keep seeing the twin suns over the sand. And, well - it’s hard to explain, but when I decided to come here, it felt - it felt right. Like the Force was guiding me.” He looked at her almost defensively, as though expecting a mocking retort, but she said nothing. “It felt as though if I came here, I’d get answers.” He forced a shaky smile. “So…here I am.” 

 

“Why did you come to Ororos?” 

 

It wasn’t, Mara thought, seeing the startled look flash across his face, the best time to ask, perhaps, but she might never again catch him in such a voluble mood. And the question had been hovering, unanswered, at the forefront of her mind ever since his X-wing had appeared out of nowhere in her viewscreen that day. She'd asked him the question already - phrased somewhat less politely - and hadn’t got an answer. 

 

She wanted one. 

 

He took a deep breath, held it, and released it. “Do you really want to know?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I saw you,” he said simply. 

 

“What?”

 

“I saw you,” he repeated. “In one of my visions. It started out the same - the suns, the fire, the blood. And then all of a sudden, there you were. In the _Fire_ , in trouble. And then I couldn’t see anything else.” He was blushing again, and resolutely avoiding her eyes. She could sense his emotions cresting, though the specifics remianed mercifully obscured by the barrier he’d put up between their minds. “There was a chance that the visions might have been about you,” he said. “And I knew I couldn’t live with myself if - if something happened, and I could have done something to help you but I didn’t. I’m saying this badly,” he said hurriedly, “But - I guess you know what I mean.”

 

“I know,” she said, mechanically. 

 

“I never meant to make you feel patronized,” he said, in a rush. “I know - I mean, I guessed - that you might have thought that. I knew when I got there that I hadn’t read it right. That you didn’t really need me. I mean - I’m not sorry I was there to help. But I know that you would have been all right without me. You’d have been able to handle it. You’re - you’re one of the strongest women I know. And I never meant to make you feel like I thought you needed rescuing.” 

 

There were so many ways, Mara thought, distantly, through the sudden landslide of emotions, to respond to that. Every one of them seemed somehow flawed. 

 

Finally, she chose the simplest. 

 

“Skywalker. You are such a prize idiot sometimes.”  

 

He surprised her with a laugh - a short bark of a laugh, but a genuine one all the same. “Oh, Mara,” he said, with open, if wry, affection. “Never change.”

 

“No fear of that,” she said acidly, while tamping down very real fears to the contrary. “Why in seven hells didn’t you just tell me?”

 

A hint of the old aggravating farmboy sparkle crept into in his eyes. “I seem to remember you saying something about me talking too much,” he said, all innocence. 

 

She glared at him, and he smiled again. But there was something still unresolved, like a half-forgotten thought, just out of reach —

 

“There’s something else,” she said. “Something else you haven’t told me.”

 

He sighed, but made no move to deny it.

 

“What is it?” she asked. “Just tell me, Skywalker. Enough of this. You just said you didn’t want to patronize me, so don’t. Just say it.”

 

The tiredness in his face was eerily reminiscent of their last conversation, in the hangar of Blackmoon Base. “I think you already know,” he said.

 

And she did. She had suspected ever since their last meeting at Blackmoon, since she’d slept a whole eight hours without dreaming or waking for the first time in years, since Kyah Imani had tested her blood and found nothing. Since she had woken in the middle of the night in Blackmoon’s medcentre, every nerve ending tingling and every danger sense flaring for no apparent reason except a faint afterimage of his hunted, terrified face. 

 

“The mindlink,” she said. “It’s — ”

 

“Changed. Deepened. I don’t know,” he admitted. “All I know is: I started seeing the emotional transference effects on Borleias.” He was avoiding her eyes again; she refused to think about why that might be, memories of the less-than-platonic dreams about him she’d had alone in her bunk on the _Fire_ hovering at the edge of her awareness. But there was no way he could have sensed those. He couldn’t have… “So - I shut down the link. Completely. I thought it would be the best thing to do.”

 

“And you didn’t ask me. Or tell me, for that matter.” She made herself sound accusing; more than she felt. 

 

“I didn’t. I’m sorry.” He looked at her beseechingly, and she felt part of herself dissolve.   

 

“It’s all right.” More than anything, she wanted him to stop looking at her like that. “It did help. You should have told me, but it did help.” And he looked so ridiculously relieved that her already bruised heart expanded again, and her defense mechanisms against the emotions she knew she couldn’t afford to feel were strained to their limit. 

 

There was no telling what might have happened next, had the timer she’d set on her wrist chrono not gone off at that exact moment in a shrill blare.  

 

“I have to go.” For the first time in a very, very long time, the prospect of getting to work did not immediately cheer her. She gave herself a little mental shake; working was, obviously, infinitely preferable to sitting around a dead fire with a mopey Skywalker talking about visions and Force transference.

 

Of course it was.

 

She’d expected him to protest, or wish her luck, or offer to help - anything but what he actually did say. 

 

“Me too.” He’d receded from her again - from Obi-wan Kenobi’s shabby little hut and everything around it, as well. She knew that look, and for a moment she was stricken with a deep, dark dread - and, more troubling, a desire to go with him, to keep him safe from whatever he was about to face. 

 

“More visions?” she thought - hoped - she sounded matter-of-fact. 

 

He shook his head. “No - not exactly. Just…a feeling. A pull. Like I’m being told where I should go.”

 

“That doesn’t sound reassuring.” 

 

“Why, Mara,” he said, a spark of Solo-esque roguishness in his eyes, “I didn’t know you cared.” 

 

She gave him her best intimidating glare and was discomfited when it elicited only a wan smile. 

 

“It’s not far from your compound, actually,” he said, and there was no trace of humour or lightness in his voice. “I can show you the way, if you want.” 

 

She thought of declining, thought about insisting she go with him, thought about telling him it was madness to follow the pull of the Force to an unknown location and an unknown threat in the middle of Tatooine’s desert, thought about telling him she could find her own way.

 

Instead, she nodded. “All right.”

 

“Get what you need.” He got to his feet, all trace of indecision gone from his face and aura, suddenly a Master Jedi once more. “We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready. The sooner the better.” 

 

 


	10. The Lowest of the Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke finds what he's been looking for, and Mara goes to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: abstract depictions of violence (in flashback) 
> 
> Fans of Luke and Mara (separately and together) may disagree with the direction I'm taking them in. YMMV. 
> 
> Thanks for reading. Comments and feedback welcome as always.

 

_There is shadow under this red rock,_

_(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),_

_And I will show you something different from either_

_Your shadow at morning striding behind you_

_Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;_

_I will show you fear in a handful of dust._

 

-T.S Eliot, _The Waste Land_

 

 

She’d had her equipment ready before she’d fallen asleep, and she’d slept in her clothes, so getting ready was a simple matter of strapping on the rest of her weapons, buckling on her utility belt and settling her small cross-body pack into place. Finally, she slipped on a set of night-vision goggles, for the moment letting them hang around her neck, and headed back outside to the speeders. 

 

Skywalker had changed into a stripped-down version of his Jedi blacks, without the structured formal tabard and with more hardy boots that were better suited to the rock and sand, old and scuffed from use. She could both see and feel his apprehension, but there was a sense of almost fatalistic purposefulness behind it. He had come to Tatooine for answers, and whatever they might be, he was about to get them. 

 

He tossed her the keys to the landspeeder. Whatever he’d done to the bike had apparently worked, because he kicked down on the throttle and it roared instantly to life, the engine rumbling smoothly as the repulsors lifted him and it a few metres above the ground. 

 

A set of night-vision goggles nearly identical to hers had been tucked into the bracket behind the handlebars and he pulled them on, settling them into place over his eyes. 

 

He’d obviously sensed her reaction, heavily shielded as they both were, because he immediately lowered them again and gave her an inquiring look. “What?” 

 

“You don’t need those to see in the dark,” she pointed out. 

 

“No,” he agreed. “But someone told me I didn’t need to use the Force for every little thing, and they had a point.” He smiled, momentarily lightening the gravity of the moment, and in his eyes was that familiar affection and deep, warm regard that she hadn’t wanted to admit she’d missed. 

 

To her utter horror, she felt her cheeks growing hot, and dropped the landspeeder keys so as to have a reason to duck out of sight while she willed her face back to inexpressiveness.

 

When she re-emerged, he’d tactfully returned his attention to the bike, though she could have sworn a trace of the smile still lingered at the corners of his mouth. She started the speeder, which purred to life surprisingly quietly, and raised her own goggles into place.

 

“Ready?” he called over the noise of the motors. She nodded. He kicked the bike into motion and she pulled down on the steering yoke to follow.

 

Even with the best night-vision scopes credits could buy, navigating the Jundland Wastes by night was no picnic, and keeping up with Skywalker’s almost effortless flight would have been far beyond a less skilled - or less stubborn - being than Mara. The bike, she knew, was more maneuverable than the bulkier T-44, but it was also much, much harder to control, especially at what had to have been its top speed, or close to it. Skywalker, inevitably, was handling the weaving, erratic route through attenuated canyons and over jagged rubble as though it were a leisurely cruise over open flatland. He did, Mara acknowledged, as she cursed for the fiftieth time while yanking the steering yoke to the side to match another sudden swerve of the bike, have the advantage of knowing where he was going. And, as with the space he’d cleared for her shuttle beside his X-wing, she knew he wasn’t subjecting her to anything he wasn’t confident she could handle. 

 

Even so, if it hadn’t been for the tenseness of the situation, she would have been convinced he was showing off. 

 

The final ascent was the hardest, with only just enough space on the narrow, twisting path between the rocks for the T-44 to fit through, and the added difficulty of keeping it on a roughly 45-degree upward angle. The fore repulsor kept hitting uneven rocks and kicking the speeder’s nose up sharply enough to obscure her field of vision and, more than once, nearly hard enough to send the whole thing flipping end-over-end. Skywalker had opened up their mental link a bit, enough to keep up a constant stream of wordless encouragement and solicitousness that was as considerate as it was aggravating. 

 

Finally, he braked to a halt and swung his leg over the side of the bike, dropping to the ground. Mara pulled the speeder up beside him, switched it off and jumped out.

 

They were on the lip of a narrow, jutting cliff, perhaps three hundred or so metres above the desert floor. Below, nestled against the mountainside, was the compound she’d seen in Iella Wessiri’s files. 

 

To her relief, no extra defences seemed to have been added since the holos had been taken, and as far as she could tell the compound itself was exactly the same: two small squat buildings at opposite corners of a shipyard that, at that moment, contained four of the transports she’d seen over Ororos as well as a few empty landspeeders and two of the lumbering ground transports the locals called Sandcrawlers. A single row of fencing surrounded the entire setup. Small lamps on several of the fenceposts had been lit, and entryway lights on the furthest building were on, but the second was entirely dark.   

 

“Only a few beings in the place. In that building, the one with the lights,” said Luke, having taken in with a glance what she’d need to be much, much closer to even begin to see.

 

“Defences?”

 

“Mostly just surveillance. And battle droids.”

 

“Battle droids?” she repeated, incredulously. Since the fall of the Emperor, all manufacture of battle droids had halted, and most of the existing ones had been destroyed in combat; she couldn’t begin to imagine where or how functional ones could be sourced almost a decade on. 

 

He nodded. “I know. Hard to believe, but I can see them. Only two. They look old, but they’re fully functional as far as I can tell.”  

 

“I’ll need to find a way down, first of all,” she said, speaking more to herself than him as she scanned the cliff-edge.

 

“There’s a path,” he said. “Behind us. It goes all the way down, and comes out on the far side of the spar. I think the Tuskens made it, long ago, before they abandoned this part of the Wastes.” 

 

His eyes were distant, unfocused, and it wasn’t from using the night-vision scopes. 

 

“I have to take it too. That’s the way I need to go.” 

 

Before she could say anything, he was walking away, toward the tumbled rocks behind them. Full of misgivings, she followed.

 

The path was half tunnel, half staircase - for large sections of it, actual steps had been cut into the cliffside. It seemed like they were going through the mountain, not down the side of it. The night sky vanished from view almost immediately, and there was rock both above and on either side of them. Here and there, the steps had crumbled into loose scree, and in places there were no steps at all, so they had to edge carefully from rock to rock, taking the utmost care not to lose footing or dislodge stones that could have quickly turned into a rockslide. 

 

Luke said nothing to her on the way down. He’d withdrawn into a place deep within himself, answering a call she could not hear or feel. It was, in a way, the only thing that provided some slight reassurance; had there been a new C’baoth, an enemy drawing him into a trap, she would have sensed it too.  

 

The path ended abruptly, opening out to an open plain. To the right was the cliff they’d left the speeders on; the path had taken them to the far side of it, putting the rise of mountain between them and the compound. All she’d need to do was hug the cliff and stay out of sight, cover a kilometre or so of ground on foot, and she’d be there.

 

“Which way are you going?” she asked him, trying to keep her voice neutral. 

 

He gestured in the general direction of the empty desert. “There.” He took a deep breath, then turned to her, his eyes a little less distant but just as troubled. “I’m going to reshield,” he said. It wasn’t a request. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I won’t risk compromising your mission with emotional transferance at the wrong moment.”

 

Skywalker. Sweet, foolish, stupidly, unfailingly noble Skywalker. She opened her mouth to rail at him, to tell him precisely in no uncertain terms what a bad idea this was, how unspeakably foolhardy it was to follow the pull of violent darkness through the Force, but all that came out was, “Be careful.”

 

“You too.” He took her hand; it took every ounce of will she possessed not to yank it out of his grasp; not to throw her arms around him. Instead she returned the fervent pressure and swallowed hard.   

 

He squared his shoulders and eased his grip on her fingers.

            

Afterwards, she would blame it on adrenalin, on the mingled strain of worry for him and dread of the ominous unknown that he was walking into, the profound wrongness of not having his presence there in her mind - and she would know, too, that none of those was right. But in the moment, without knowing why or even translating the impulse to conscious thought, she held on to his hand before he could let go and leaned in to kiss his cheek.

 

His eyes went very wide, vivid with confusion, and with something else entirely. Quickly, she released his hand, pulled her hood up to cover her distinctive, shining hair, and broke into a jog, heading to the cliff without daring to look back. 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Mara sensed the hum of energy buzzing through the fence rails before she heard it, from several dozen metres away. Her goggles doubled as macrobinoculars; through them she could see the rectangular frames of holorecorders positioned on every alternate fencepost, each with a steadily flashing red light indicating the cams were operational and recording. She knew she was far out of their coverage where she was, but she’d have to do something about them before she got too much closer.  

 

She took a deep breath, held it, and let her awareness expand out as she exhaled. 

 

It was always easier on a ship. Flying was in her blood, in a way that had nothing to do with her abilities in the Force. It was easy to tell those who had the same innate touch. Solo had it too. Karrde had it; though he had not flown much for years. Antilles, Mirax Terrik and Tycho Celchu had it. Corran and Luke had it; like hers, their skill was enhanced by their Force-affinity but did not originate from it. It was a gift. It made it easier to let the Force guide her hands on levers and yokes and control switches. 

 

This was similar, in theory, but it was harder.

 

The mechanism of the recorders was simple enough. Lacking triggers, they simply recorded constantly, saving footage to internal datacards that had to be manually swapped out when they ran out of memory space.

 

It wasn’t strictly necessary to use physical gestures to channel the Force, but even Skywalker still did it on occasion. Even if the benefit was only psychosomatic, it was still a benefit.

 

She raised her hand; flexed her fingers. Found the circuits buried deep in the metal casings that transmitted power to lenses and screens, and, with a quick, decisive twist of her hand that rippled out through the space between her and the recorder, tugged them free of their housing. 

 

Two of the flashing red lights went dark. 

 

She checked quickly to make sure the circuits were still connected. She’d have to reseat them when she left, which would start the recording up again with no trace that it had ever been interrupted unless someone troubled to look very closely at the time stamps on the footage later. She did not intend to give them any reason to. 

 

The fence was low enough at 10 metres to pose little challenge; she didn’t even need to shut down the power to its electrified rails. She had levitated higher than that in Yavin’s training room; jumping it was the work of a second. 

 

She landed on the other side with a solid _thump_ and was on her feet instantly, checking for signs of life. There were none, but there was buzzing whine of robotic motion, drawing rapidly closer to where she stood. 

 

Whoever had programmed the battle droids had been unimaginative, or simply inexperienced. They advanced together, side by side, and long before she was in range of their built-in ocular cams she’d downed them both with two precisely-placed stun shots from her holdout. The effects were temporary - as she’d intended; leaving them permanently disabled would be to leave evidence of her having been there - but she didn’t need them to be out for long.

 

She’d come prepared with one of Ghent’s code-cracking devices, but to her disbelief, the door to the operations centre was unlocked - devoid even of an old-fashioned uncoded lock. A tap on the access panel and it slid obligingly open for her. It felt much, much too easy and she paused, sure she must be missing something. Again she scanned the area, concentrating hard. 

 

Nothing. 

 

She stepped inside, still frowning. 

 

It was more of a storage hangar than an ops room, and no attempt had been made to partition it - the mainframe computer sat directly next to a battered table piled high with datacards and sheets of flimsy, and most of the space was taken up by shipping containers. The ferrocrete floor was streaked with grease and sand and liberally scattered with footmarks; hers would not be joining them. She could sense no cams within the building; evidently whoever was running this show had decided that perimeter surveillance was enough.  

 

Ghent had designed the data ripper she extracted from her pack, and it had taken him over a year to do it. As soon as it connected to the mainframe, it would record and decrypt everything contained therein, and do it at least three times faster than any device available on either the civilian or the military markets. It was his magnum opus. He’d also designed the code-cracker that had already proved unnecessary at the door; incredibly, she didn’t need it at the terminal either. 

 

Mara shook her head and murmured a mild obscenity under her breath. There was not even so much as an access code; the terminal beeped into life the moment she touched it. There were no insignia or crests on the screen, only a simple menu of files and folders. 

 

She wasn’t sure what to make of it. Carelessness? Hubris? It seemed almost impossible that it wasn’t a trap, but her danger sense had picked up nothing. Knowing she could neither afford to waste time nor to turn back, she made her decision, and quickly hooked up Ghent’s data ripper to the system. As it ran, swiftly and systematically locating the contents of the mainframe, she moved to the table and began to sift methodically through the datacards and filmsy sheets. 

 

Most of the cards held footage from the cameras, and these she discarded - she didn’t have time to copy them all, and she had to trust that whatever information they might provide would also be contained in the mainframe. The flimsy sheets looked like shipping manifests - covered with rows of time stamps and quantities, merchandise codes and vessel registration numbers. She copied them all to her handheld datapad, saving images to look at in more detail later, moving fast. Even as briefly as she was scanning them, it became quickly apparent that the seemingly-random strings of Basic that made up the merchandise codes were repeated, and often. She began to count silently, and when she had scanned the final sheet and dropped the bundle back to the desktop she was more or less certain that there were 12 codes in all. 

 

She checked her chrono; she was in good time. Ghent’s device hummed away smoothly. No alarms had been triggered, nothing was stirring. 

 

Mara moved to the stacks of containers, her datapad still recording images of everything she saw. She could see the codes from the flimsy sheets repeated, stamped on the sides of crates and cases. She could only find 11 of the 12; she moved methodically over the stacks again, re-checking, but she could not find a container with the last code. 

 

She’d have broken into them if she needed to, and would have done it untraceably, but there was, yet again, no need. Every single container was unlocked. All contained rows upon rows of tiny, clear vials, sealed and unmarked. They resembled, in every way, the vials that fit her hypodermic, and even had Iella Wessiri’s reports not prepared her for what she might find she’d have been able to guess what they contained. Every last crate was filled with them, there was nothing else - no supplies, no fuel, nothing at all. 

 

From her shoulder pack she pulled out a padded metal box. It contained a dozen identical vials, all filled with the same simple salt mixture. Quickly, deftly, she removed a single vial from each of 11 containers, making sure not to accidentally choose any two with the same code, replacing the ones she took with the ones she’d brought. When she’d finished, she made sure the seal on the box was intact and slipped it back into her pack, then headed out to the shipyard.     

 

With the night chill outside came unease. It wasn’t a warning - at least, not of anything concrete, or of a specific threat. It was, she thought, a little like seeing the faint traces of a stain that hadn’t quite been scrubbed away; she could feel the vague insubstantial remnants of many beings’ feelings and emotions, beings who were no longer there but had been, though how long before she could not tell. They were a jumbled mess, and too faint to isolate thoughts or words, but clear and distinct through the cloud of mental noise was the sharp acrid bite of fear. 

 

She recorded images of all the transports, making sure to get clear shots of their markings. Staying well hidden in the shadows, and trying in vain to detect any trace of life inside them. When she’d edged around the last in the row - one of the huge sandcrawlers - she noticed that it alone out of the six was open. 

 

The smell hit her even before she put her head around the edge of the entryway: sweat, excrement, urine, and other less distinct odours that had combined in that contained space into an unbelievably noxious stench. Mara gritted her teeth and was about to move further in when her warning sense flared. 

 

It was a skiff - not close, but covering ground fast. Quick as a flash she was out of the sandcrawler and racing back to the ops room. Ghent’s device had finished its work; three green lights glowed on its control panel, indicating that the computer’s contents had, in their entirely, been found, decrypted, and copied. She snatched it up and stuffed it back into her pack, then ran for the fence. 

 

One of the battle droids had begun to stir as she passed it, the very tips of its skeletal arms just starting to twitch. The fence was as easy to clear as it had been on the way in; she was up and running almost as soon as she hit the ground on the other side, barely checking on impact, reactivating the cameras with a wave of her hand the second she crossed the invisible line separating their coverage area from the rest of the desert. She could hear the skiff now and she quickened her pace; the soft, loose sand would have been an impediment to most humans, but Mara Jade was not most humans.

 

Within minutes, she’d reached the sheltering dark of the cliff face, and melted into the cover of the shadows.

 

Even with her macrobinoculars, she couldn’t see the skiff, and in fact the sound of its engines was fading, receding into the distance. She cursed softly; she might have had more time to explore the compound, but at least she had accomplished everything she’d set out to do.

 

She could have gone back, she knew. It would be dawn soon, but she’d still have some time, and it would not be fully daylight for hours yet. 

 

She knew she wouldn’t be turning back. 

 

She began to run again, hopping over piles of rubble and loose stone, once more turning her focus outward, searching the emptiness ahead and trying not to acknowledge just how anxious she really was at not sensing the presence she was looking for. A deep sense of dread was welling up inside her, all the worse because for once she couldn’t tell if it was her own emotions or a subtle warning through the Force. 

 

On she ran, still searching, straining every sense, and resisting the almost overwhelming urge to call his name. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Mara saw him before she sensed him, just visible in the murky predawn light, and that alone would have been troubling enough, but it wasn’t the only thing that was very, very wrong. 

 

He was on his knees, head bowed, hands clenching and unclenching in the sand in front of him, as though he were trying to grab hold of something that wasn’t there. His whole body rocked jerkily, unnaturally, back and forth, and he was making inarticulate noises of pain that reminded her of a wounded animal. 

 

She was beside him in an instant, but no sooner had she reached him than her danger sense flared, sharp and furiously urgent, and she pulled up short, whipping around to look for the source. 

 

There was nothing to see. 

 

They were surrounded by a flat expanse of bare, salt-streaked sand. Scattered around were what looked like the remnants of a long-ago encampment: blackened firepit stones, shards of what might have been lantern posts jutting up out of the sand. Ragged scraps of fabric fluttered from the remnants of spindly, splintered sticks that could once have been tent poles.

 

“Skywalker!”

 

He showed no sign of having heard her. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he was locked in what she could only hope was a vision. She fumbled in the sand, grabbing hold of his hands, and all at once it was as though she was beating on a closed door with her bare fists - the only thing standing between her and the space he was trapped in, the barrier he himself had made. _Come on,_ she thought, desperately, injecting as much urgency into the call as she was capable of. _Luke!_

 

_Let me in…come back - come back to me -_

 

The sky shifted, and changed, darkening rapidly back into deepest night. A stinging, lashing storm wind sprung up out of nowhere, almost blinding her with blowing sand. _This isn’t really happening_ , she thought frantically, and almost before she’d finished thinking it she realised the truth: _It’s already happened._

 

The wind died away, and they were on the edges of an encampment, a miniature sea of domed tents surrounding a firepit. The world seemed to have gone blurry at the edges, somehow simultaneously hyperreal and disconnected from reality. For a long moment there was complete stillness - she could see the movement of the flames, but she couldn’t hear them - and then the world dissolved into chaos.

 

There were voices screaming - dozens of them, shrill with terror, sounding like nothing close to human. Her field of vision was a blur of flames and scarlet and frantic motion - darting shapes, and a glowing blade that looked sickeningly familiar, slashing and spinning, cutting down the scrambling, fleeing figures in their flight. The ground beneath the two of them trembled and shook, then began falling away, melting into nothingness, but it was a nothingness with the weight of deep water, and they were both drowning in it. He was writhing, twisting in empty space - but she was still gripping his hands, so hard that she was dimly aware her fingernails might have drawn blood. 

 

It was like swimming, but swimming in an endless sea where gravity shifted and the horizon rolled, and the surface she was struggling towards was everywhere and nowhere. She kicked and fought, and the weight of him was close to dragging her down into a darkness that stretched out to infinity, but she held on - held _tighter_ , because if she let go the darkness would take him - then suddenly the surface was right there, so close, so very close, she just needed one more burst of effort —

 

Her eyes flew open and she sucked in air with a gasp, followed by another, and another. She was back in the present, in reality - kneeling in the barren desert with the sky overhead beginning to lighten to a heavy, dull grey, and not even the faintest hint of a breeze in the air.     

 

Skywalker sat up, his own breathing hoarse and uneven, but his eyes were open and he was _there,_ and the rush of sheer relief was so great she had to close her eyes against it for a second.

 

“Mara…thank you,” he rasped. “I couldn’t…I don’t know what - ”

 

“Don’t.” She cut him off, not even wanting him to say it aloud. She’d seen the black depths of the sea that wasn’t a sea before, and she did know. “It wasn’t you.” It seemed important to say it, in case there was still a chance he hadn’t figured it out. “You thought it was you, but it wasn’t…”

 

“Not my lightsaber,” he coughed.

 

“No. Not yours. Mine.”

 

“Wasn’t yours then. Not yet.” His voice was heavy with exhaustion. “My father’s.”  

  

The barrier he’d put up was gone; she could feel what it had cost him to see what he’d seen, but she still didn’t fully understand. He had known for years what Anakin Skywalker was, what he’d become.

 

“What happened?” she asked, hesitantly. “I could see fragments, but - ”

 

“They were Tuskens,” he said. “A whole troupe. He slaughtered them. All of them. Even - ” he faltered. “Even the young ones, even the matrons. I don’t know why. I could feel rage, but only at the start. Then - it was joy. The killing - he was enjoying it.” 

 

Mara realised they were still clinging to each others’ hands, and if she squeezed any harder there was the very real risk that one or both of them would break a finger, but she did it anyway and felt him respond in kind, both of them ignoring the pain.

 

“This was when it happened,” he said wearily. “When he truly turned. I see that now. He became Vader, and not Anakin Skywalker any more. They were barely sentients to him - he killed them like their lives meant nothing. Like they were nothing.” He swallowed hard; his eyes were wet. “And he left them here. No-one gave them funeral rites. He didn’t leave anyone to mourn them or bury them. It’s one of the worst things you could do to anyone. Leaving a body to rot like that, as though it’s no better than carrion, not a person at all.”

 

She saw them then, just as he’d seen them when he’d followed the call through the Force to that place. Faceless figures, swathed in masks and cowls, draped in stained ragged robes the colour of mud and dust. There they had died and there they had stayed, lingering insubstantial shadows in the Force, tethered to the sands.         

 

Not for the first time, she wished she had Leia Organa-Solo’s eloquence, or even just the ability to deliver easy comforting platitudes. She wasn’t good at soothing words. But the need to say something - anything - to ease the depth of pain she felt from him was overwhelming.  

 

“You’re not your father,” she said finally. “That was his destiny. It doesn’t make it yours. You’ve already proved that. If you hadn’t, Palpatine would still be alive. And I’d be dead.”

 

He let go of her hands. She wondered if saying that had made it worse, but then his arms were around her and he was hugging her tightly, and for a moment she was so stunned she couldn’t move or think or speak. 

 

“Thank you,” he murmured in her ear. Then, suddenly sounding much more like his usual infuriating Skywalker self, he added with a grin that she could both hear and feel, “And thank you for letting me do this without getting my arms torn off.”

 

“There’s still time.” She managed to sound acerbic despite the traitorous reactions from her own body; it was all she could do not to melt against him and she was more certain than ever that there was something very seriously wrong with her.

 

He chuckled softly, and let her go. She got quickly to her feet, brushing the sand from her clothes. “We should go.”

 

He nodded. “I found what I needed to. Now I never want to see this place again.”

 

“That makes two of us.” 

 

They’d barely covered a few hundred metres when she felt the tug in her mind; she saw and felt it reach him almost in the same moment. Her first, instinctive fear - that they were both being pulled back into the vision of the carnage wrought by Anakin Skywalker - quickly dissipated. It wasn’t a warning - there was no hint of danger there - just a quiet but insistent call for attention. This time there was no need to look for the source.

 

The man was sprawled on the ground in the open, with no trail or track to show where he’d come from. He was draped in robes - not the coarse homespun of a local or even flashy spacer’s garb, but fine violet and cream-coloured silks. His fleshy, bloated face was frozen in a grotesque rictus; she could tell at a glance that he hadn’t been dead long. She remembered the look on Iella Wessiri’s face when she’d spoken of how desperate her husband was for news of his sister, and she sighed. 

 

Luke raised his left hand in a gesture of summons, and from the collar of the dead man’s robes rose a glittering chain that she hadn’t noticed before. As he lifted it up and away from the body the pendant fastened to it came into view: a large silver medallion stamped with a bright red Imperial crest. 

 

“You know who he is?” she asked.

 

“Yes. Wedge showed me Iella’s files.” He lowered his hand and the chain fell back into the sand. From his belt he drew a commlink, switched it on, and said into it: “Wedge? I’ve found your governor.” 

  

 

   


	11. Interlude: Entaglements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mara starts to figure things out, and experiences first-hand the minor disadvantages of having to share space in a small one-room hut.

 

_The awful daring of a moment’s surrender_

_Which an age of prudence can never retract…_

T.S. Eliot, _The Waste Land_

 

 

The return to Kenobi’s hut through the sunrise was far easier than the journey out had been, and not just because she could actually, properly, see where she was going this time. Despite how drained she knew he was, Skywalker guided the speeder bike with the same effortless breakneck speed as he had on the way in. However, when they pulled up in the tiny courtyard, his dismount was far from elegant; he even staggered slightly as he dropped to the ground. She wondered how many days, exactly, he’d gone without sleep. 

 

She was almost through the door when she realised he wasn’t following. Incredibly, he was staring into the distance, in a different direction from where they’d come, and she knew what that look meant.

 

In her mind, through his, she saw the deserted ruins of an old homestead in the open plains. A sunken courtyard, a garage cluttered with parts and model ships and ancient disemboweled speeders that could only be the possessions of an idealistic teenager with a passion for tinkering and a deep yearning to escape, to explore, to break free of the boring grind of farm work and live the promise of his name. The emotions were bone-deep and only barely diminished by the passage of years; rising in the wake of an indistinct rush of memories - both bittersweet and painful - of the childhood and adolescence of a sweet flaxen-haired boy with stars in his wide blue eyes. 

 

The dull ache sharpened to a knife point with the shift into a single crystal-clear memory coloured by terror, guilt and dread. A younger, thinner Luke in too-large farm clothes stumbling from a speeder into the blasted wreckage of his childhood home, knowing what awaited him but finding that knowledge does nothing to ease the agony when he sees them with his own eyes: charred corpses sprawled where they’d fallen, their escape cut off swiftly and brutally by a volley of ruthless, directed blaster fire. Not Tuskens, but the remains of the aunt who had loved him in place of the mother he never had, and the uncle whose abrasiveness had been honed by the need to protect, to shelter, to honour a promise.

 

The barrier between their minds gone, she saw and felt it all along with him, and thought she might be beginning to understand. 

 

“It wasn’t just that,” he said. His voice was still rough; exhaustion dripped from every syllable. “I don’t know why my father did what he did.”  

 

“You couldn’t see the trigger?”

 

He shook his head. “No,” he admitted. “I tried. But it wasn’t there to see.” 

 

He glanced at the speeder, then back out to the horizon, and when he next spoke the words seemed wrenched from somewhere deep inside him. “What I know - I saw it, I felt it - is that at the start, before…before it turned ito something else, he was certain he was doing what was right. He was delivering justice. For what, I don’t know. And…I’ve felt the same way. More than once.”  

 

“Luke - ” Too late, she realised the slip, but he didn’t seem to have noticed.

 

“The visions I’ve been seeing - they weren’t me. But they’re still a warning.” Watching him - feeling him - was like pressing down on a fresh bruise. “Yoda and Ben warned me that this would be my undoing. That I had to learn to distance myself, that emotion and attachment would lead me to the Dark Side, like they did my father.” 

 

The mention of his long-dead mentors made Mara’s hands curl involuntarily into fists. She had told him once - only once - how she really felt about Kenobi and Yoda, and his reaction had been about what she had expected. She could not stomach his loyal defending of the two beings who should have guided him, protected him, but had instead been only too pleased to throw him to the Saarlac if doing so would serve their purpose, the purpose for which they had marked him out from the very beginning. She knew, even if he could not bring himself to see it, that whatever affection they might have felt for him had not prevented them from seeing him merely as means to an end.

 

Another pawn in the Jedi Council’s grand game.    

 

“They said entanglements would always be a Jedi’s downfall. Perhaps they were right.”

 

“Detachment didn’t save the old Jedi Order.” The vehemence of her tone surprised her, but saying it made it easier to ignore what the sound of the word _entanglements_ spoken in Luke Skywalker’s soft, tired voice was doing to her. “Detachment was what brought them down.” 

 

She ignored the surprised look he gave her and went on, relentless: “Detachment was what blinded them to what was happening right under their noses until it was too late to do anything about it.” He bristled, and the argument was there on his lips, but almost immediately his thoughts settled into reluctant assent. “They were so sure they were infallible,” she spat, unable to keep the bitterness out of her rising voice. “So sure that if they simply decreed that the Order should be emotionless monks, it would make it so. They didn’t know how to handle emotional frailty, so they thought they could just will it away. _That_ was what brought them down, _that_ was what let Palpatine gain a stranglehold on the galaxy right in front of them. If they’d spent less time celebrating their own brilliance and more time teaching their baby Jedi how to actually handle emotions without succumbing to them they might have been able to do something to stop that happening!”  

 

She stopped, breathing hard. 

 

Braced for the inevitable flood of denials, rationalisations. 

 

It never came. 

 

“You’re right.” 

 

She could have handled an outburst. She did not know how to handle this. 

 

He hadn’t said it just to appease her, to avoid an argument he didn’t have the energy for. Dissembling had never been his way. There was no resentment behind the words, only sadness, and regret.

 

“I have to go,” he murmured, and it brought her back into the moment. It was to the Lars homestead he meant; she could see it in his mind, the conviction that the last piece of the puzzle waited for him there. “I need to know. I have to find out.” 

 

“Be careful what you wish for. It may not be what you want to see.”

 

“You said it yourself,” he said softly. “The downfall of the Old Jedi was refusing to face what they didn’t want to see. I can’t make the same mistake. No matter what it costs me to see it.” 

 

Mara bit her lip, hard. Reminded herself that it was nothing to her if Skywalker found answers that would only cause him more pain, as they surely would. She might have to clean up after him yet again if he went off and did something stupid, that was all. It would be an inconvenience. A minor inconvenience. 

 

Nothing more. 

 

And once more, in the back of her mind, she heard laughter that was both mocking and pitying.

 

“You should get some sleep,” she said, abruptly. He looked at her, clearly about to refuse, but all at once a fresh wave of dizzying exhaustion hit him - hard enough that the aftershocks made her wince slightly - and he sighed, then nodded reluctantly.   

 

“Just a few hours,” he mumbled, though whether it was directed at her or himself she couldn’t tell. 

 

Inside, she busied herself with setting up her commlink for a long-range transmission. Karrde and Iella Wessiri were waiting to hear from her, all the more urgently since she knew Antilles would already have spoken to them from Mos Espa. The information she’d collected from the compound’s mainframe needed to be transmitted as soon as possible so that both their teams could start combing through it. It was work she could have done in her sleep, but she focused her full attention on it, tapping keys and connecting wires as though the fate of entire star systems depended on it. 

 

It wasn’t enough to stop the noise of water in the shower from intruding upon her thoughts, or to stop her eye from wandering to the pile of black clothes discarded on the ground a few metres away from where she sat.    

 

Angrily, she stared at the empty static cloud projecting from the holocom, cursing the transmission delay. Where _was_ Karrde?

 

“Mara?” Finally, his voice filtered through the comm and a flickering image of his face appeared.

  

The noise of running water had stopped, so she could hear him clearly.

 

“I’m here.”

 

“Good. Are you all right?…Hello? Mara? Can you still hear me?”

 

Mara had been raised never to believe in coincidence, and even when whole facets of her belief system had been stripped away after the Emperor’s fall, that had remained. So she knew it was the Fates, or the Force, or something else entirely, that had seen fit to have her find Luke Skywalker floating in a crippled X-wing in empty space. Whatever it was that had alerted her senses to bring the _Wild Karrde_ out of hyperspace in that precise convergence of space and time also chose that moment, when Karrde’s face had just fully resolved itself in her holocomm, to have her glance away from it. Only for a moment. 

 

Long enough to fully take in the sight of him, emerging from the fresher and pushing back his wet hair absently with one hand as he stooped to pick up his clothes with the other.

 

Water dripped from the ends of his hair; trickled down his freshly-shaven jaw. Droplets of it beaded on the smooth skin of his broad, tanned chest, and slicked the narrow trail of hair beneath his navel into a dark line that disappeared into the small thin towel that was all he wore, wrapped around his waist, as he wandered past her to the trapdoor in the floor that led to the cellar and his bed. 


	12. Rats' Alleys - Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience through my little break from working on this! Updates will be more frequent for the next few chapters as they've already been written and just need tweaking. Thank you so much to everyone who left comments and positive feedback.

_I think we are in rats’ alley_

_Where the dead men lost their bones._  

-T.S. Eliot, _The Waste Land_

 

It was technically early evening when the _Narra_ dropped out of hyperspace, but it could just as easily have been midnight or midday. All hours were as one on Kuat, especially on the enormous Orbital Ring that formed the heart of the legendary Drive Yards, where everything was always in motion and state-of-the-art terraforming combined incongruously with a total lack of solar cycle simulators that ensured it always looked like night time. A dense, teeming warren of workshops and factories, shipyards and docks, the Ring was home to the hordes of workers that made up a vast behemoth of production running nonstop to ensure that ships, droids, parts and tech were churned out at the same breackneck pace that had made the system infamous in the old days of Empire. 

 

With Kell at the helm, the _Narra_ slid unobtrusively in among the other of incoming transports. Beside him, Maher tapped away at a screen, entering the mutiple lines of security code necessary to enter the system unchallenged. Peacetime or wartime, it made no difference; Kuat’s security was among the most rigorous in the galaxy. 

 

There was nothing for him to do, but Face had come up to the cockpit anyway, and was watching the ships that streamed endlessly past them, hundreds upon hundreds of traffic channels all radiating outwards from the gargantuan Orbital Ring. Not for the first time, he forced himself not to think about how they’d track down their handful of targets if by some chance something went wrong with the mission plan.   

 

“Code clearance received. Shuttle 3414-086, you are clear to proceed. Do not deviate from your stated course.” 

 

Maher shut off the comm. “Normally we would have to have the ship inspected at the docking bay,” he said. “But they didn’t say anything about that this time.”

 

Kell laughed. “I’ll bet NRI got those codes from Karrde, so I’m not surprised.”

 

“He has connections on Kuat?”

 

“You could spend a lifetime travelling the galaxy and not find a system Talon Karrde doesn’t have connections in,” Kell said. “Building networks comes as naturally to him as breathing. And he and General Solo were running black market shipments through Kuat even when the Empire had control of it. Between them they likely know everything there is to know about this place.”

 

“You have been here before.” Kell nodded. “When?”

 

“Before I joined Starfighter Command. After my father’s death, and some bad mistakes. I knew I could find work, and I knew I could be annonymous here if I wanted.” 

 

“And did you not find work? Or did you not find your anonymity?” 

 

Kell shrugged. “I did, for a time. Then I wanted more.”  

 

Maher smiled. “And so: Wraith Squadron. Your second chance?”

 

“More like my fifth or sixth.”

 

“You make yourself sound very disreputable, my friend.”

 

“We all were,” Face pointed out. “The first Wraiths. I’ve heard it said General Antilles sought out our kind on purpose.” 

 

“We are very respectable now, though,” Maher laughed. “I heard of Wraith Squadron from many before I joined, and they did not speak of us in the way you say.”

 

“When we need to be,” Face agreed with a grin. “But old habits die hard.” 

 

Behind him, Dia and Shalla appeared, both of them stifling yawns behind their hands. 

 

“That didn’t take long enough,” Shalla sighed. “I could have used an hour or two more to sleep. How long until we dock?”

 

“Not long.” Kell indicated the glowing map on the nav screen, on which the entirety of the Orbital Ring was displayed. Their destination, the supply space station, loomed directly ahead, already visible in the viewscreen as well as on the map. 

 

“Our transport, is it ready?” 

 

“It is.” Maher passed her a small webbing pouch. “There, your keys and access cards. And a chip for the navcom, to direct you. The safehouse will not be easy to find without it.” 

 

“Thanks.” Shalla yawned again. “I’m going to get ready. Last time I didn’t have time to set my wig properly.”

 

Face glanced at Dia as she slipped her hand into his. She was already ready; heavy makeup and fake tattoos expertly applied to her face and arms, and her slender form swathed in garish scarlet and silver fabric. Enormous gaudy gemstones hung from her ears and around her throat, and there were even a handful decorating the gilt belt at her waist. All the flowing fabric concealed her weapons. There was no disguising the fact that she was Twi’lek, so she would be posing as Kell’s companion. 

 

Only once, during the earliest days of their relationship, had Face been apprehensive about not being on the same strike team as her, torn between his respect for her abilities and his protective instincts. That had been many years before, and subsequent events had proved, if proof were needed, that Dia could handle herself perfectly well without him. He knew, too, that there was value in working apart, that, as she liked to point out when work was over and they were together in their quarters, if nothing else it gave them things to talk about.        

 

“You look lovely,” he said, straight-faced. She elbowed him in the ribs, and he chuckled.

 

“Kell should get ready,” she said. “You want to help him, or should I?” 

 

“I want Face to do it,” Kell said immediately. “I don’t like the way you do my hair. I used up a whole tube of cleanser to get the colour out last time.” 

 

“Human hair is impossible,” she grumbled. “But fine. Phanan will need to come up to take the helm.”

 

“I’m here.” Phanan, as was his way, had materialised with unsettling suddenness at the back of the cockpit. He, too, was already in character, wearing the only disguise that could cover his cybernetics without drawing even more attention to himself: a full-body mechanic’s protective suit with heavily tinted eyeshades favoured by multiple humanoid species who could not tolerate the dry, heavily polluted atmosphere of industrial worlds like Kuat. It was heavy and cumbersome, but Phanan, who was stronger and more agile than he looked, had become so accustomed to it over multiple missions that he could manage it with relative ease. 

 

He unstrapped and shucked the top half of the suit, the better to fit in the pilot’s seat, and took Kell’s place as the big man disappeared into the _Narra_ ’s crew hold with Face.   

 

“Fifteen minutes,” he called back over his shoulder after them. To Dia, he said, “This feels strange. I can’t remember the last time I had to land this thing.” 

 

“You know I can’t do it. Ground control will see.” 

 

He nodded glumly. Dia, Piggy and Kell were, by far, the most experienced at piloting cargo and passenger transports, but the sight of a Twi’lek or a Gamorrean at the Narra’s helm would compromise the whole squadron’s cover before they even landed.  

 

“You’re doing fine,” she said. “Maher will handle the docking gear. Ease up on the aft repulsor when you reach the bay and she’ll coast in.”

 

“Thanks.” 

 

A warning flashed on above their heads: they were in range of the spaceport’s visual scanners. Swiftly, she stepped back and into the shadows; Phanan drew his helmet over his metal faceplate, hiding both his red mechanical eye and his real blue one.  

 

The wing of the landing bay that Karrde’s codes had secured them was dedicated primarily to unmanned shuttles from nearby offworld space stations that also belonged to the Drive Yards, returning parts and wares that had failed product testing, or departing laden with loads of supplies. In a space occupied primarily by droids focused on their programmed directives, it would be easier to operate without scrutiny. 

 

The Ororos ships’ crews had not stayed together, and the Wraiths were splitting up to follow them, but before they could do anything else, each strike team would need to make contact with the agents who had been shadowing the crews since their landing on the Drive Yards. 

 

Kell, his hair now three times longer, dyed to a mousy shade of brown and sticking up in messy spikes, shrugged on a bulky shapeless spacer’s jacket to obscure his muscular frame while Phanan and Dia re-checked their equipment. The three of them, along with Piggy the Gamorrean - now dressed in the armour, leathers and furs of a Rimworlds Gamorrean bodyguard - would be proceeding on foot; their rendezvous was the closest. Face and his strike team had to navigate the winding alleys to a sector near the administrative sector to meet their own informant, and Shalla was already behind the controls of their skiff, programming its navacomputer as the rest climbed aboard. 

 

Only Runt, who was impossible to disguise and could not be passed off as a companion or guard, would be staying behind, to monitor the entire mission and join either strike team if the need arose. He was uniquely qualified for the task, with his multiple minds capable of focusing on many situations at once, simultaneously analytical and empathetic. He watched the teams keenly as they prepared to leave, sitting at a data terminal he had already unhooked from the spaceport mainframe as a precaution. There could be no lingering digital fingerprints of their work, or even their presence.    

 

“This Intelligence officer you are meeting, Kell. Do we know him? I cannot remember seeing his name. Or his face. But I feel I know him all the same.” Runt stared critically at the personnel file he had pulled up on his screen. 

 

Kell shook his head. “He’s pretty low down in the food chain. But his grandfather served with distinction during the Rebellion, so let’s hope it runs in the family.” 

    

“At least you know who you’re meeing,” Face pointed out, double-checking his cosmetic prosthetics in the skiff’s wing mirror. He now wore a shock of greying hair and had somehow contrived to give himself a squarer jaw, a more deeply lined but completely unscarred face, and even affected an uncannily natural-looking limping stoop. “We have a code name and a signal, that’s all.”    

 

"Whining doesn't suit you any better as an octogenarian, you know."

 

“Time to go.” Tyria spoke before Face could reply, without looking up from the tiny device strapped to her forearm. “Security clearance of the bay going into effect now for the droid ship departures. We have 5 minutes to take advantage of it before they go back to standard procedure and stop us for a weapons check.” 

 

Kell glanced around at his own team, saw them nod in assent. The others were in their places on the skiff. Tyria squeezed his hand briefly and went to join them.  

 

This was it.

 

“Right.” Face was the last one in; his eyes met Dia’s briefly, then moved to Kell and the rest of the squadron.  “Wraiths, move out,” he ordered. “And may the Force be with you.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Mara had prepped the _Shikara_ for departure alone. All through the long conversation with Karrde over a flickering transmission, he’d been there at the very edge of her awareness, sleeping a deep and dreamless sleep in the tiny cellar room below. He’d woken after little more than two hours, but he had not come to her or offered to help her load her gear into the shuttle; surprisingly, neither had he jumped on his speeder and raced out to the ruined homestead. Instead, he had taken up his cross-legged levitating meditation posture by the firepit where she’d found him in the night, and there he had stayed, hovering just above above the ground, lightyears away from her and everything else.   

 

He was shielding, but he had not shut her out this time. His thoughts were guarded, his emotions carefully contained, but he was there; a presence that burned with the bright, steady glow of a candle flame on a still night. 

 

It was barely mid-morning, but Tatooine’s twin suns were high and the air crackling with heat haze when she finished securing the last of the _Shikara_ ’s hatches. Her thin tunic was already damp with sweat, sticking uncomfortably to her back. Cursing under her breath, she reached into her small go-bag for a fresh one. 

 

And caught sight of the vaporator tower sitting there, humming away beside the hut. Water. Kenobi’s hut had water, and a shower - a real one, not sonics. 

 

Hard on the heels of that realisation came a cascade of images, thought and memory: the sheen of moisture on faint puckered scars, dripping hair slicked down to the colour of dull gold, heavy dusty black fabric dropping to the ground, hands moving purposefully across skin awash with rivulets of soapy water, and she caught her breath with a hiss. 

 

She couldn’t take the risk. Not with him there, so close, and the barrier between their minds so gossamer-thin. Quickly she stuffed the spare shirt back into her back and shouldered it, suddenly desperate to be gone. If she moved quickly, she could be in the air before - 

 

He was already on the ground, already much too close to pretend she hadn’t seen him and hurry to the cockpit. She stared at her datapad, at the flight plan she’d already committed to memory, and all too soon he was right there, reaching a hand up almost absently to brush a layer of gritty desert dust that had obscured the word _Shikara,_ painted on the hull beside the Starbird insignia of the Rebel Alliance. 

 

“Clear skies, Mara. And thank you. For everything.”

 

“You’re staying?” She injected as much casual disinterest into her voice as she could. To almost anyone else, it might have been believable.

 

“Not for long.”

 

 _And then?_ Aloud she said, “You won’t…”

 

The words weren’t necessary. She dropped her eyes; it was too much. Less than a dozen words exchanged and he had not so much as touched her, but the air between them was thick with an intimacy that swelled like a blast from a furnace, and she found herself reflexively shying away from it before it burned her. 

 

“I won’t.” He reached out, laid his hand - the real one - over hers where it rested on a landing strut, and squeezed it briefly. Before she could react - to pull away, or twine her fingers through his, she did not know herself - he had let go. “I may see you sooner than I’d thought. Take care of yourself,” he added, softly. 

  

“Take your own advice, Jedi.” The acerbic edge to her retort sounded unconvincing even to her. Already halfway up the ramp before she had finished speaking, she felt rather than saw his smile, and it stayed with her all the way through Tatooine’s atmosphere and subspace, lingering as she finally gave in to fatigue and curled up at the end of the ridiculous scarlet bed after making the jump to lightspeed. She dreamed of shadows and of caverns of red rock, but when she woke to the insistent beeping of the navacomputer’s proximity alerts, it was with the memory of the kiss she’d given him beneath the cliff in the Jundland Wastes and the way his hand had felt on hers.  

 

 

* * *

 

 

The streets outside the spaceport were gritty underfoot, and every building carried a coating of grime so thick it was impossible to make out what colour it might have been underneath. It was not hard to pinpoint the reason. The adjoining sector was full of factories, huge hulks belching smoke and dust and occasionally ragged tongues of flame from massive exhaust pipes straight into the artificial atmosphere, from which pollutants were - at least in theory - extracted each day, but Kell decided that whatever mechanism was responsible for this process must have long since ceased functioning. Beyond those were the Andrim shipyards, adding their own potent mix of airborne chemicals to the atmospheric stew. Kell had grown up amid very similar industrial sprawl on the shipyard world of Sluis Van, but for sheer scale, the Kuat Drive Yards easily surpassed anything he’d ever experienced on his homeworld.  

 

There was not a single residential building within a three hour speeder ride, but there was an abundance of tapcafes and exceedingly dubious-looking food stalls, scattered around the main plaza and throughout the handful of streets and alleys crammed with machine and repair shops that branched out from it. There were beings everywhere, of every conceivable species, pilots and traders and mechanics and hangers-on, thronging the narrow lanes, haggling and bellowing and arguing. It was an easy place to lose yourself in the crowd.

 

That was exactly what they had done. He and Dia walked together, her arm in his, with Piggy following a pace behind as befitted the status of the lowly bodyguard he was supposed to be. Phanan slouched alongside, his face hidden beneath his helmet, managing to convey both detachment and boredom. 

 

Unlike Face’s team, they were meeting an officer from the NRI, one of many that operated full-time on Kuat and systems like it, serving as discreet eyes and ears on the ground. It came as even more of a surprise then when Kell realised that the tapcafe where they were meant to make contact was not, as he would have expected, one of the smaller, grittier and therefore more inconspicuous ones among the machine shops, but the largest in the main square, big and spacious and, by the Orbital Ring’s standards, brightly lit, without quiet corners or discreet alcoves. 

 

“Are we sure this is right?” he murmured to Dia, who looked as doubtful as he felt. 

 

“That’s what the dossier says,” she whispered back. “But…there’s no cover. None. It even has cams.” He followed her line of sight to the tiny panels set into the walls, and realised there were dozens of them, covering virtually every metre of the space.  

 

Piggy’s face didn’t move, but the words flowed from his translator, set a few octaves lower than normal. “Kell. I do not like this. We will be too exposed. And our disguises will not stand up to scrutiny if we are captured on holocam.”

 

“I hear you, Piggy.” He hesitated for just a fraction of a second, then made up his mind. Giving Dia’s arm a gentle tug, he smoothly changed course, heading for a row of food stalls set up in front of huge rotating spits of roasting meat. Beside the last one was a low-ceilinged sprawling tapcafe, lit only by the glow of each table’s single illuminator globe and hazy with smoke from the cheroot pipes of a crowd of Besaliks sitting near the entrance.   

    

“Send him an alert on the warning channel,” he said in a low voice to Phanan as they walked. The warning channel was a legacy of illict communications during the Rebellion: a secure comm channel with the sole purpose of warning a contact that something had gone awry and the rendezvous or plan of attack needed to be aborted or altered. To anyone listening in, the short, apparently random signals would mean nothing, but the flash code that the Rebel spies had developed could transfer volumes of information if needed.            

 

“Already done.” 

 

“Tell him to meet us here - I don’t think this place has a name, though…”

 

“So much the better,” Phanan pointed out as they entered. Dia, having summed up their options at a glance, guided them to a table near a dais strewn with cables and other musicians’ accoutrements. No band was occupying it at that moment, but the piles of equipment and hangings around the stage effectively cut off any outside view of the table; all anyone would be able to see unless they came right up to them would be the edge of the booth and the right shoulder and arm of whoever sat there. Kell motioned for the others to move in and sat in the end seat himself, shifting the worn Mandalorian gauntlet he was wearing from his left forearm to his right.  

 

“I will get drinks,” Piggy said. “It is expected of me in this role, and I would like to get a good look at this place.” By which, Kell knew, he meant that he wanted to size up any potential threats, and make sure he knew where all the exits were - or where exits could be made if necessary. Dia slid a viewscreen from the voluminous folds of her tunic and set it on the tabletop; the tiny cam lens set in Kell’s gauntlet was already recording, so they could see the room without having to turn around. 

 

“He’s here.” There was a frown in Dia’s voice, and Kell immediately saw why. 

 

The Intelligence officer was a human male, and even the act of walking through the tapcaf’s doorway had drawn attention to him. In stark contrast to the worn robes, spacer’s garb or utilitarian work suits on the beings that milled around them, he was dressed in immaculate casual clothing more appropriate for the water gardens of Coruscant than the underbelly of an industrial world. He had made no attempt to disguise himself. To make matters worse, he seemed to be actively trying to appear suspicious: craning his head and frowning to make it so blatantly obvious that he was looking for someone that it was almost a parody of conspicuousness.   

 

“Stealthy,” was all Phanan said, and Dia stared at Kell, appalled. 

 

“What is he playing at?” she demanded in a whisper. “He might as well pull out an illuminated sign.”

 

“Shh,” Kell said, trying to ignore his own misgivings. “He’s headed this way.”

 

“Hello there,” the man said brightly, sliding into the booth next to Phanan without being asked. “You must be - ”

 

“ - people who don’t throw their real names around in public on covert missions? Yes.” Phanan said drily. The man looked taken aback, then let out a short, rather foolish laugh. 

 

“Officer Logan, I presume,” said Kell.

 

“That’s me.” He was not young - he looked to be in his early thirties, if not older. His pale hair was manipulated into waves and spikes with so much product that Kell could see white streaks of it at his temples; it had clearly been done for a youthful affect, but had only succeeded in making him look even older and faintly ridiculous. He looked around, distaste evident on his large, rather colourless face.

 

“Why did you want to meet _here_?” he asked. “The booths at the Gravitron are much nicer. And they have better drinks.”

 

“We aren’t drinking,” Kell reminded him. “We’re working.”

 

“Oh…right.” Logan gave him an exaggeratedly knowing wink. “Of course.”

 

At that moment, Piggy returned with their drinks - plain lum, that almost none of them intended to actually drink. Logan, taking his without thanking or even acknowledging Piggy, then glanced into his glass and made a face. “I’m getting something stronger,” he said, and began to rise. 

 

Phanan calmly grabbed his shoulder, forcing him back down into his seat; Logan let out a little yelp of indignation. “No,” he said. “You’re not.” 

 

“You - I - ”

 

“You have information for us. You’re going to tell us what we need to know, and you’re going to do it fast. Which is what you’re here for.”

 

For a moment Logan looked like he might press the argument, but the look on Phanan’s half-metal face seemed to make him change his mind. “Fine,” he said sulkily, and drew a datacard from his jacket. He tossed it on the tabletop. “There’s your information.”

 

Dia’s face was a study, but she fitted it into her datapad. “Runt?” she said. “Can you see this too?”

 

“I can,” came his voice through her comm. “Thank you.”

 

“Who’s that?” Logan asked, without interest.

 

Dia and Kell exchanged looks. “You didn’t get your briefing?” he asked.

 

“Oh, that. Yes. I did.” He grinned. “I didn’t really look at it all that closely.” He sounded almost proud of that fact, and Kell realised he did not actually know who any of them were - did not even know, most likely, that there were non-humans in the group he'd been assigned to meet.         

 

Dia had already finished scrolling through the files on the card; there were not many of them. Images of several human men, time stamped, all seemingly taken at the same location. A map, and some images of a nondescript apartment building...and that was all.

 

“What else do you have?” Kell asked.

 

Logan stared at him, a little irritably. “Well, what else do you _need_?” he demanded. “That’s the crew. They’re here every morning, and they drink for an hour at the Gravitron every evening before they go back to their lodgings in Tau-9. Which is that, there.” He jabbed at the map, then sat back and folded his arms with the self-satisfied air of someone who had just performed a complicated magic trick.  

 

Kell opened his mouth, but couldn’t find the words. 

 

Dia got there first. “That’s _all_ you have? Seriously?”

 

The look he gave her was ugly enough that Kell saw Phanan’s gloved hand close into a fist on the tabletop. Hastily he said, “You said they’re here every morning. And that they drink at the Gravitron in the evenings. Where have they been going in between?”

 

“I don’t know.” Logan gestured vaguely in the direction of the factories. “Somewhere there.”

 

“You don’t know.” Phanan’s voice was even, but Kell heard the undertone that had crept into it and knew what it meant. “You didn’t consider, say, following them to find out?”

 

“Of course not. I couldn’t risk tipping them off!” He looked, somehow, both smug and defensive. “I’m NR Intelligence,” he continued, patronizingly. “This is how _we_ work, unlike Starfighter Command. We don’t charge in with blasters blazing in every single situation.”

 

Anger surged through Kell, but before he could speak, the harsh hiss of Piggy’s translator forestalled him. “I have studied the maps of this sector,” he said. “I think I have narrowed down their possible destinations. And I believe I know how we can track them more precisely, but we cannot do it from here. Not with this data in any case.”

 

Dia was scrolling through documents on her screen, so fast that the individual files were a blur. She pulled up a single image and showed it to Piggy, who nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “Kell, Phanan, we should go, this will take time to set up.”   

 

Logan’s expression turned scornful. “I didn’t know Starfighter Command let the window dressing and the dumb muscle do mission planning these days,” he said. “In fact, I didn’t realise they gave you pilots…assistants.” The way he said the word, and the way his eyes lingered on Dia’s torso, made it all too evident what he really meant. 

 

Dia’s eyes flashed fire; Piggy’s thick lips drew back over his tusks in a silent snarl. Phanan, his voice dangerously quiet and his blue eye cold as ice, said, “You’re speaking about Flight Officer Dia Passik and Flight Officer Voort sa’Binring. I recommend you address them with due respect.” 

 

Logan’s smirk widened into a full-blown sneer. “What’s a mechanic going to do about it? A walking heap of spare parts has no right to speak to an Intelligence Officer that way. I might report you for that, you know.”

 

“I’m the mechanic,” Kell said.

 

“What?” Logan stared at him, confused.   

 

“I’m the mechanic,” Kell repeated. “He’s a doctor, and Wraith Squadron’s current executive officer. He’ll speak to you however he pleases.” 

 

“I think I’ve wasted enough time on this one,” Phanan said. “And we have work to do.”

 

“True enough.” Kell stood abruptly, rocking the table enough to spill Logan’s drink; he jumped and swore aloud. 

 

“I’m not working with you until I get an apology!” 

 

“We don’t need you,” Kell said. “So you won’t be working with us in any case.”

 

“You can’t run a mission in this sector without me!” Logan’s face had turned an interesting shade of purple. “I’m - ”

 

“Our orders are from NR High Command, which means we answer to High Command and General Antilles. No-one else. Our mission parameters do not require us to involve undercover agents beyond the extent we deem necessary.” Phanan’s words landed like hammer blows, and Logan recoiled a little in his seat. 

 

“You’d know that if you’d read the mission brief,” Dia interjected, coldly. “I know it’s in there. I was the one who wrote it.”

 

“I am NRI! I - ”

 

“ _You_ are not necessary. _We_ are done here.” 

 

“My CO will hear of this.” Logan’s voice shook with rage. “My…my grandfather will hear of this…”

 

“How fortunate for them.” Phanan slid from the booth and followed the other three out, leaving Logan staring after them, his mouth hanging foolishly open. 

 

Outside, Kell gave vent to his frustration, though the need to keep his voice low meant the words came out in an angry hiss. “I’ve had hangovers more productive than that meeting. How in seven hells is he a NR officer?”

 

“A famous name can bring a man more than this,” Piggy pointed out, practically. 

 

“And I’d wager before this week he’s never needed to do anything more taxing than collect holocam tapes and file reports,” Dia added. She was still angry, but she was containing it masterfully. “At least we know what they look like. And Piggy has a plan.”

 

Phanan smiled, a real one this time, visible even with his helmet down. “I saw,” he said.

 

“I didn’t,” Kell said. “Why do you look so pleased?”

 

“Me? Why ever not?” Phanan’s smile was wolfish. “All we need to do is hijack a security transport. It’ll be the most fun I’ve had in weeks.”


	13. Rats' Alleys - Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was intended to be part of the previous chapter, but for some reason didn't load with the rest. Instead of editing Part I I've turned this into Part II, and the Kuat action will conclude in Part III, coming soon...

 

They had left the skiff with a droid attendant in one of the hundreds of valet stations bordering the sector, in which the lanes were so narrow that almost no commercial transports larger than a speeder bike could navigate them safely. The only vehicles permitted in the sector were ground shuttles, and there were no private ones, only those operated by and carrying personnel from the nearby supply station and security forces headquarters. 

 

It did not much matter to Face and his team. Blending in with the hordes of pedestrians was all too easy - security here was high, with cams everywhere, but he knew that with the sheer volume of beings milling around, the cams had been set up specifically to pick out security risks: visible weapons, unauthorized vehicles, aggressive drunks and the like. Even if they were being recorded, it would be almost impossible to pick them out of the milling crowd as long as they did nothing to draw attention to themselves. 

 

Said crowd was an interesting mix: off-duty station staff mingled with retail and security force workers, as well as offworlder crews of supply transports taking advantage of the brief downtime before they departed the system, and residents from the nearby apartment blocks. So noisy and dirty was the Kuat Orbital Ring that only few locations were safe enough to be used as residential zones, and even by cramming as many apartments as possible in these zones and banning commercial establishments that might have taken up precious living space, each and every one was already overcrowded. 

 

When they found it, the tapcafe turned out to be a typical spacers’ haunt: windowless, smoke-filled and raucous, packed with pilots and ships' crews drinking and eating and playing games of chance. A brawl broke out as they entered; Myn Donos neatly sidestepped a fat Devaronian staggering backwards, the drink in his claws splattering everywhere, reeling from a punch square to the face delivered by a honking, bellowing Aqualish. Others leapt to their feet to pull the two apart - or simply to get a better look - and Face slid into a booth thus vacated, gesturing for the others to join him. The booth’s original occupants, a crowd of Biths carrying battered instruments, realised too late what had happened and glared at him with all the aggression their bulbous eyes could muster, but he ignored them and they slunk away, muttering invective in a series of squeaking grunts.    

 

He glanced around as casually as he could, making sure to look both bored and forbidding. They had no visuals on their contact, only an assurance that whoever it was would find them. That spoke of Talon Karrde’s agents, not Iella Wessiri’s, and the prospect was both encouraging and a little daunting. You knew you’d get what you needed from Karrde’s agents, the problem was that you never knew what else might come with it.

 

“What are you looking at, greybeard?” Out of nowhere the Devaronian reappeared, directly in Face’s line of sight, now accompanied by a bald human in the tattered robes of a Fortune Seer: beings who had capitalised on the return of the Jedi to the galaxy by claiming to be fortune tellers attuned to the Force. They were skilled con artists and put on convincing shows of their supposed gifts, but they were rarely aggressive. This one, however, was scowling at Face as though he had personally insulted him.

 

“For a droid,” Face said carelessly. “It’s a long journey we’ve had, and my crew want to drink.”

 

“Drink, is it?” The balding man came closer. He had fierce, rheumy grey eyes and florid, sagging jowls; spittle flew from his fleshy lips when he spoke. “I think it’s something else you’re wanting.”

 

Out of the corner of his eye Face saw Maher and Donos shift almost imperceptibly and knew their hands were on their weapons. Beside him, Shalla had tensed up, anticipation in every line of her body, ready to block a blow should it fall unexpectedly. The staff in the bald man’s hand twitched. 

 

“You’re wrong in that.” Face kept his voice level. “Best you go now, and find a gullible soul to tell pretty fortunes to, I’d imagine you’ll find them lined up three deep at the spaceport.”

 

“I’m going nowhere. I like it here.” The man leaned down until he was just inches away, close enough for Face to see the red streaks in the corners of his eyes and smell the ale fumes on his breath. “Perhaps I’ll stay until I get a drink. Seeing the future is thirsty work.”

 

“Bar’s over there,” Donos said. “You’ll get no satisfaction here.” 

 

“No? And that’s a damned disgrace, I say.” His expression shifted to something like a leer, and he made a show of shaking his head in mock sorrow. “I have seen the deaths of men and foretold both riches and ruination, but I did not ever think I’d see the day young Garik Loran refused to buy a poor stranger a piddling little drink.”

 

Face’s blood turned to ice. _No. No. There’s no way._

 

Unthinking _,_ he started to rise, and he didn’t know what he might have done had he not seen sudden understanding flash across Tyria’s heavily disguised face.

 

“The girl knows.” The bald man’s laugh was higher than he would have expected, a rich delighted cackle, and his voice had changed too. And then, all at once, his sallow face bulged out; bony hands rose to lift back the ragged hood, but it was not just the hood that came away.

 

“You - ”

 

“Me,” agreed the man who was no longer a man, and Face sat down heavily as a grinning Moranda Savitch drew up a stool and sat down across from him. “Close your mouth, Loran, before you catch something nasty in it.” 

 

She smiled around at their stunned faces.

 

“You’re very good at this,” she said kindly. “Face here especially, though that’s only to be expected. But I’m better.” The look she gave Tyria was both appraising and approving. “Ranger girl. You knew. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

 

“I’m not a Ranger,” Tyria said quietly.

 

“No,” Moranda agreed. “There are no Antarian rangers left to the galaxy. But you have the blood, and with the blood comes the gift. Shame to hide such a pretty face, but you do it well, child.”

 

Face saw the others exchange looks, as though evaluating whether the old woman could see through all of their diguises, too. 

 

“You’ve all done decent well. Possibly a precaution too far for this sector, though I suppose you never can be too careful. It would have been kinder to have let this one alone, though.” She addressed the last remark to Falynn, though it was to Donos she gestured, unrecognisable behind a fake nose that bulged and sagged as though it had been punched in more than once, and a thick fake brow ridge that shadowed his eyes.

 

Falynn frowned. “Kinder?”

 

“Not keeping that handsome face all to yourself, dear. I’ll grant as that's you right, but it’s a cruel thing to deny a poor old woman with few joys left in life.”

 

Falynn laughed, and Donos shifted awkwardly in his seat.  

 

Moranda waved a hand, and the Devaronian vanished into the crowd. “Now,” she said briskly. “Let’s get down to what you’re really here for, eh?”

 

Face glanced around warily. “Are we - ”

 

“Safe?” She sniffed disdainfully. “What a question to ask me, Face Loran. No-one will hear, you can rest easy on that. Those louts…” - she gestured at the nearest table, the only one in earshot, occupied by Rodians in grease-stained coveralls - “…speak a dozen words of Basic between them, and my boys took the liberty of disabling the Security Forces surveillance for the sector.” 

 

“You mean for the cafe. Or the block, maybe.” The Wraith’s youngest and most recent recruit stared at Moranda with open skepticism in his big brown eyes. He spoke fluent, mellifluously accented Basic when he spoke at all, which was not often.

 

“Cass,” Tyria said, warningly. 

 

“I mean what I say, boy. They do it a few times a month. The Security Forces haven’t yet managed to work out how to stop them.” She grinned, revealing a single iron-grey tooth among the rest. The Devaronian reappeared with a glass brimming with blue-green liquor; he set it down in front of her and withdrew. “There’s not much to tell. They’ve found apartments in Tau-9, 10 units, all to be cleaned and re-rented first thing tomorrow. You want to get in, this is all you’ll need.” She handed Shalla a small security chip and access card. “But you don’t have a lot of time.”        

 

“How many?” Donos asked

 

“Thirty-five. Near as I can tell, they left a man on each ship, but I will admit I can’t figure why so many came down to the Ring. All they’ve done is buy fuel and supplies, and not a lot of either.” She reached into the voluminous folds of her robes and produced a sheaf of flimsy. “See for yourself.”

 

Donos took the pages from her and began to flip through them, passing each to Falynn as he finished scanning it. “This is everything they’ve bought?”

 

“Not quite.” Moranda sipped her liquor. “There’s a machine shop a dozen blocks from here. It’s not much to look at, and it’s no different from a hundred others in the sector, but three of your men have spent a good four hours in it each day they’ve been here. Not on the shop floor, but in the office. What they’ve been doing there, I couldn’t tell you. I am good at what I do, but mind-reading is not one of my skills. You might have done better to bring that pretty Jedi husband Mirax Terrik found herself for that.”

 

Face grimaced. “We could tail them,” he said. “But we’re too late. If they’re leaving the system tomorrow, they won’t be going back there.”

 

“No time tomorrow, it’s true,” she agreed pleasantly. “No need to be too disheartened though.” Once more her grey-toothed grin flashed out. “I used to pick pockets as a girl, you know. Never thought some day the lords of the galaxy would pay me so highly to do it on their behalf. Truth be told I’d do it for nothing, it’s great fun.” She reached into a pocket at her belt, and this time she extracted a handful of datacards of the cheap, basic kind mainly used for small amounts of simple data storage; they were popular with clerks and accountants. “I don’t know what they talked about in that office, or who they talked with,” she said. “But these are what they brought out with them.” 

 

“They have not missed them since you took them?” asked Maher. 

 

Moranda cocked her head and gave him a look that was half exasperation, half amusement. “This one has never stolen, I see,” she observed. “Face Loran, I’m disappointed. I thought yours was the crew of reformed miscreants.”

 

“Most of us are.” 

 

“And some haven’t reformed all that much,” Tyria said drily, to which Moranda cackled gleefully. 

 

“I didn’t leave them emptyhanded, boy,” she said to Maher. “Might be they don’t know it yet, but they have an impressive collection of Rimworlds pornography to ease the sting of their sad loss.”

 

Shalla began to laugh then. Tyria giggled too, and the young brown-eyed pilot between her and Maher choked on his drink and hastily tried to convert it into a throat-clearing cough. Face looked at the grinning old woman for a long moment.

 

“Whatever they’re paying you,” he said, with sincerity, “It’s not near enough.”

 

She wagged a finger at him. “Flattery will get you everywhere, young man. As it happens I’ve discounted my rates for your Republic. It’s not my usual way, but Karrde and Solo are the most charming of scoundrels.”  

 

Face smiled. It was not a side of either Karrde or General Han Solo that Starfighter Command usually got to see, but he was one of very few among them who had seen Solo with his princess outside of formal publicly broadcast events, and he had some idea of what the old woman meant. 

 

Donos said, “Are they back at the apartments now? All of them?”

 

She shook her head. “Most, yes. The three I told you about are still out and about, though they won’t be for long if the last day or two is anything to go by. You want to get them while they’re negotiating at the machine shop, you best go now.”

 

Face nodded. She gestured for his commlink. He handed it over, and noted with resignation and without surprise that his secure passcode for it might as well not have been there; two taps at the keypad and she was through. 

 

“How did you do that?” he asked, knowing full well she had no intention of telling him.

 

“Don’t ask stupid questions, Loran, it doesn’t suit you.” She stabbed at the screen a few times, then handed it back; a glowing green dot had appeared on the nav screen. “That’s where they are. No more than a few minutes on foot, but the Security Forces offices being so close, there’s surveillance everywhere. Watch yourselves.” 

 

“Thank you, Moranda.” He reached out a hand and shook her thin, mottled one; frail though it seemed, her grip was firm as iron. 

 

“Go now,” she urged. “Time is not on your side. If tomorrow you should feel yourself in need of conversation, here’s the place.” Her pale eyes gleamed. “I’ll find you.”


	14. Rats' Alleys - Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Wraiths mission on Kuat comes to a close, and things get weird.
> 
> Coming up in the next chapter: General Solo, and a fight that is not what it seems.

“Are you having fun yet?”

 

He could not see his friend’s smile, but Kell knew it was there.   

 

They had found the shop almost by chance, before they had progressed far enough in the planning of what they were about to do to even begin actively looking for a vantage point for a stakeout. It had been Phanan who noticed it, Phanan who even with only one true eye missed nothing and knew instantly the value of what he had walked past. It was apparent even from the outside why it was not open for business; a blackened patch on the wall and splintered, charred wiring where the air circulator should have been. Signs had been hurriedly thrown up marking it unsafe for occupation, and across the door was tacked a notice with the insignia of the Kuat Drive Yards, notifying all that necessary repairs would be conducted within the week. It had been locked down, and while they could have sliced the security mainframe with relative ease, a well-placed blow from Piggy’s huge fist to the old-fashioned latch on the service entrance door had done the job far more quickly and neatly.     

 

That had been an hour ago, and while Kell could not silence the nagging worry that they might have been seen, he was holding his fears in check. No alarm had sounded, no patrol or guard or sector police had appeared, and that would have to be enough reassurance for the moment. 

 

Phanan was in position, a position precarious enough that Kell, who was by no means afraid of heights, was avoiding looking directly at him. Narrow struts extended outwards from the building’s sides, holding in place a slew of cables and connectors that connected each unit both to the sector’s main power grid and the mainframe that provided access to the galactic Holonet and security services. Phanan hung between two of these, an arm around each, so slender that it seemed impossible that they could bear his weight, but they were thus far holding up without a tremor. His cybernetic left leg was stretched out at an angle, bracing him against the building’s exterior wall. It was only his bionic leg and arm, incapable of tiring or weakening, that allowed him to hold the position; had his limbs been flesh and bone his muscles would have given out and sent him crashing to the street below. 

 

From where he hung, he could quickly and methodically disable the security cameras for the entire alley by the simple expedient of shooting each one out with a small, sleek laser rifle, which made up in accuracy what it lacked in raw firepower. When the last one exploded with a tiny _crunch_ and shower of powdered glass, he looked down at where Kell and Dia stood, on the tiny rickety maintenance scaffold clinging to the side of the building just below him.   

 

“That’s it,” he said. 

 

“Piggy,” Kell called. “You’re clear.” 

       

The Gamorrean edged cautiously out of the back entrance. Phanan had made his climb out of the cams’ range, and had they not been deactivated he would have been walking directly into their line of sight. 

 

“Can you see the transport?” he asked.

 

“Right on schedule.” Phanan, from his vantage point, could see many of the streets and alleys beyond. “I’d say we have five minutes, maybe six.”

 

"I do not need more.” He lumbered across to a row of compactors. Bolted to the ground, each was connected via a conduit system to the building behind it. The first in the row was the largest, fully as long as a landspeeder and twice the Gamorrean’s own height. Crouching, he levered his blunt fingers under the edge, with the muscled trunks of his legs braced. 

 

And _pulled_.

 

The scream of rending metal split the air; Kell flinched slightly, but neither Phanan nor Dia took their eyes off their respective targets. 

 

“Three minutes.” Phanan’s red eye glowed brighter. 

 

A noise like many whips cracking in rapid succession rang out; bolts and rivets were flying out of the ferrocrete wall. Piggy’s nostrils flared, his tusks gnashed and the cords of muscle in his huge arms stood out like twisting ropes; shifting his grip just a fraction, he drew a long breath and roared it out as he heaved mightily upwards. 

 

A great cloud of dust billowed out and crumbling fragments of ferrocrete sailed through the air as the squat Gamorrean staggered back and the compactor came away with him. For a moment it looked as though he must surely drop it or collapse beneath its weight, but instead he grunted and took a single step to one side, then, with a final herculean surge of effort, flung the entire thing away, across the narrow alley to bounce and crash against the opposite wall. It came to rest on its side, the lid bowed in and sides cracked, lying across the only path that led from the alleyway to the main city street, rendering it completely impassable. 

 

“Perfect,” Kell said, and Piggy grunted in satisfaction.

 

“One minute,” Phanan’s voice floated down. “Move. Now.”

 

No sooner had the transport turned into the mouth of the alley than it stopped dead, and Kell could almost see the men inside taking in the wreckage spread out in front of them. A spotlight flared to life, sweeping slowly across the empty alley, lighting up swirling clouds of dust.   

 

“Citizens. Make your presence known. By order of Kuat Security, you are - ”

 

Kell reached into his jacket for the small, square detonator, and pressed the button.

 

The charges he and Dia had set into the wall erupted. 

 

Dia was already moving, slipping through the noise and fire like a darting shadow. She’d stripped off her gaudy finery and was, like him, wearing smoke-grey combat clothes. There were no more commands issuing from the security transport loudhailer, only frenzied swearing and snatches of urgent chatter. But the hatch remained securely closed, and Kell grimaced. _Not enough._

 

He raised his blaster and took careful aim; across the alley, on the far side of the transport, he saw her do the same. They fired in the same insant, raking the flanks of the armoured caterpillar with bolts. The echo was deafening in the small space, the air acrid with scorching and smoke, but the transport remained sealed. Even the loudpeaker had shut off. Only the searchlight was moving, raking up and down the walls and panning from side to side across the debris-strewn ground. Waiting.

 

Dia motioned with her blaster. _Again?_

 

The dark shape hurtling down out of the sky forestalled his reply. Phanan landed with a solid _thump_ on the transport’s roof, one knee bent in a crouch. In his hand was a long, curved vibroblade; without waiting for a reaction from within the transport, he brought it slashing down into the narrow space where the hatch fit into the roof, and twisted.  

 

That did it. Alarmed and unable to see what was happening, the troopers inside had evidently decided that enough was enough. The hatch slid open, and Phanan might have been knocked off-balance by the abruptness of it, but he did not miss a beat. Shifting the knife to his left hand - the real one - he reached almost casually into the opening with his bionic arm and hauled out a struggling officer, dressed in black body armour and a chrome helmet. They would have stopped a blaster bolt at anything less than point blank range, but they did nothing at all to stop Phanan from hurling the man over the side as though he were all but weightless. 

 

Whether the armour would have protected him from the impact of the fall, the guard was never to find out. Kell caught him, wrenching his arms behind his back, and the man barely had time to struggle before Dia appeared noiselessly at his side. The tiny pneumatic hypodermic in her hand pressed up against the thin bare strip of skin between his helmet and collar, and he went limp as a rag doll in Kell’s arms.        

 

Muffled, incoherent shouts rose from within the transport, but not for long. A loud _thump_ sounded, followed swiftly by another. 

 

_That’s three._ Kell knew the TH-7100 model of security patrol transport well, and knew it could hold a crew of no more than five. 

 

Four and five did not resist; or if they did, it was a token resistance. A long moment of silence, and Phanan’s head appeared above the hatch. “All done,” he said. As he spoke, the panel door in the side of the transport slid open to reveal four figures slumped on the floor, all in the same uniform armour. He began to lift them out, passing each one to Piggy, who dragged them one by one into the empty shop and propped them up behind the door, out of sight. 

 

“How long will they be out?”

 

He shrugged. “I couldn’t customise the doses, so it’ll vary. The big one, it’ll wear off him in three hours, maybe a bit less. Four for the others, give or take.”  

 

“Will that be enough?” From her tone, Dia did not sound as though she believed it would.

 

“Only one way to find out.” 

 

She made a face, then slipped past him into the transport’s dark interior.

 

The transport had been designed for five, but even so, with Piggy’s bulk, they only just fit in the tiny cockpit. Kell took over the controls while Piggy wedged himself with some difficulty behind the navigation console.

 

“Kell, the autopilot, is it engaged?” he asked.

 

“Sort of.” Kell tugged experimentally at the steering yoke. The transport roared into life and lurched forward. “I can override if I need to, but it looks like it’s on a preset course.”

 

Piggy shook his head. “Do not override. Not yet. Just keep us moving.” He gazed intently at the screen, across which information was flashing so quickly that it was almost a blur. 

 

“Is that the surveillance footage?” Dia asked.

 

“The last five days’ worth.”

 

She moved closer, craning her neck to see better in the cramped space. “This route seems to pass nothing but factories,” she said. “Why would they be visiting factories? They can’t buy anything directly off the production lines, it’s against the Drive Yards regulations.”

 

“They might not be able to buy, but it’s a good way to check the merchandise without attracting too much attention,” Phanan said. “That, and theft, obviously. There’s always that.”

 

“Obviously.”

 

“I have them,” Piggy said. There was a hint of quiet triumph in his normally inexpressive voice, audible even through the translator. “Kell. Keep going. I will tell you where to stop.”

 

“They have only been to one place?” Phanan asked, skeptically. “Every day? The same place?”

 

“As far as I can tell. I will keep looking, but this footage is clear. They have followed the same route each day, no changes.”

 

“They’re on foot?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Carrying…”

 

“Nothing. Nothing that I can see.”

 

Kell shook his head. “I’m not doubting you, Piggy. But that makes no sense.”

 

“You are not wrong. But unless this footage has been manipulated, that is what they have done.”

 

“Could it have been manipulated?” Phanan asked.

 

“I do not think so.” 

 

Kell and Phanan exchanged looks. In his friend’s half-metal face Kell saw his own discomfiture reflected back at him. Both of them knew that Piggy was not mistaken; he almost never was, and there was not much reason nor room for error here. 

 

When Dia spoke, she spoke for them all. “They’re looking for something. What are they looking for?”

 

Kell drew the steering yoke down to keep the transport on course, and wished he had an answer to give her, to ease his own nagging, growing doubts. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The first person she saw when the Shikara slid into its landing bay was Antilles. His X-wing, as battered and scored as all the personal craft of Starfighter Command’s elder statesmen seemed to be, sat beside a handful of fighters in a bay that was much emptier than it had been when she had left it. The squadrons had gone, to join Solo for his strike on the Imperial holdout on Ororos. 

 

A half-smile touched his face when he saw the ship, but it was a brief one. He looked haggard and grim, still in flight clothes creased from wear and streaked with sweat; he had probably left Tattooine even before she had, without the luxury of a cabin to rest in during the journey, though it was likely he might not have slept much even if he’d had the means to. Iella Wessiri had told Mara what her husband had found in the empty house in Mos Espa, and it was clear what it had done to him to see it.

 

He waved in her direction, and then he was gone. _To find his quarters and sleep for half a day._ They had no mindlink, and he was not Force-sensitive, but his exhaustion would have been plain to most anyone. But all the same, perhaps that wasn’t where he was headed after all. 

 

Tucked away in her pack was the container of vials she had stolen from the compound in the Wastes. Antilles and his team had found more, and they would need to be analysed. Blackmoon’s medical officers were ready and waiting, including - by Karrde’s order - their newest recruit, the doctor the vornskrs had taken such a shine to. Tired he might be, but he’d get to the medcentre first. 

 

Mara knew she should feel more tired herself. The few hours of sleep she’d snatched in the absurd scarlet bed aboard the _Shikara_ had left her more restless than rested, full of an unfocused, nervy energy that irritated her. She needed to _do_ something. To lose herself in something. To not think, or dream, or give her mind the chance to reach out through deep space and search for distant warmth.

 

_The Fire_ , she thought, grabbing her pack and rising from the pilot’s chair. First the medcentre, then she’d go to the mech bay and see what they’d done with her beloved ship. And then, if there was still time that needed passing before they heard from Ororos, she decided, she’d just have to head to the training room and blow things up for a while.  

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

   

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

 

Face looked at Tyria, fighting the maddening urge to scratch the edge of his fake beard where the glue holding it to his face had begun to itch. Like him, she was crouched at the very edge of a crumbling roof deck, with a huge industrial ventilating unit at their backs providing their only real cover. The rest of the team were one floor below, on a balcony, hidden from sight and in earshot, but also unable to see anything beyond the high wall of their hiding place. As far as Face could tell, with the surveillance systems deactivated - although there was no knowing how long that would last - they were reasonably sure to not be spotted, but the habits of half a lifetime were hard to break, and he had made the others stay down and completely out of sight. 

 

Tyria was wearing the expression she sometimes got when she was in one of what Kell referred to as her half-Jedi moments, a term only he could get away with using. Tyria had some touch with the Force, they all knew that, but her gift was unpredictable and inconstant. Still, he had never ignored it before, and wasn’t about to start now. But he wished she had not said it; it was what he himself had been thinking, and making himself ignore. 

 

“Why?” he asked, trying to hide his own dread. 

 

She frowned. “I wish I knew for sure. I’m sorry, Face, truly.” She slapped the wall lightly in frustration. She had mostly learned to live with the tenuousness of her Force powers, but her inability to truly tap into it the way the Jedi did still haunted her. 

 

“What are you feeling?” he asked. “Don’t reach for what you can’t see. Focus on what you can.”

 

She drew a breath. “It feels - like seeing only half a picture. Like we’re missing something, there’s another piece, another page. But it’s not here to see.” She managed a rueful smile. “I know. It’s not helpful, is it?”

 

“It might be,” he said, cautiously. “You don’t sense danger?”

 

“None.” She said it unhesitatingly. “And that seems strange too.” 

 

He nodded. It did.    

 

From down below, Shalla’s voice floated up. “Anything?”

 

Quickly Face transferred his attention to the machine shop they were meant to be surveilling. Shuttered off and small, it was both entirely innocuous and completely impossible to see into: completely typical in every way. And yet, for some reason, it had drawn the ships’ crews to it three nights in a row, and they were there now.

 

Or at least he thought they were.

 

“Nothing,” he called back, reluctantly. 

 

Donos spoke, raising his voice to be heard above the whipping winds. “Face. There has to be something we can do. Instead of just sitting here waiting. What if they’ve gone?”

 

It had already occured to him that they might have done exactly that. The only thing that suggested otherwise was the lights still burning above the shop floor, sending visible signs of life and motion across the drawn shutters that their sensors had picked up. _Someone_ was in there, and all the other shops had closed for the night.   

 

_Half the picture_ , he thought ruefully. Everything about this mission felt wrong in a way he could not put his finger on, and it was throwing him off more than he was comfortable with. There should have been more - more fighting, more pursuit, more activity, more than this strange slow pursuit of men who had so far done precisely nothing he had expected them to do. 

 

He made a decision then.

 

“You’re right.” He straightened up, making sure they could all see as well as hear him. “They haven’t gone, I’m sure of it, but we can get to work. Shalla?”

 

She raised an inquiring eyebrow. 

 

“I want you and Tyria to go back. Out of the sector. Find the apartments.”

 

“Why?”

 

“The datacards.” He produced them from his jacket and held them up. “They’re copied, we have the information. We don’t need the originals any more, and the second they try to run one of the cards Moranda slipped them they’ll know someone’s on their tail. I don’t want that to happen.” 

 

Tyria nodded, understanding dawning. “You want us to switch them back.” 

 

“Yes. That’s why I want you two. If anyone can get in and out and make the switch cleanly, it’s you.”

 

“That’s true,” Shalla said. She said it without vanity; it was the simple truth. She and Tyria were, by far, the most accomplished of the Wraiths at stealth and incursion. Face had heard Wedge Antilles remark that many NRI operatives would be hard-pressed to match them. It was an obvious choice. 

 

“And you?” Shalla rose, checking her weapons reflexively without looking at them. 

 

He opened his mouth to reply, but in that instant, the door of the shop below flew open. 

 

His brain reconfigured the words into a shout of warning, a command, but almost in the same instant registered that there was no need. They were Wraith Squadron. In the merest fraction of a second, all had vanished out of sight. 

 

Tyria was beside him, tensed into rigidity, her macrobinoculars at her eyes. 

 

The voices of the men floated up, clearly audible through the night’s silence in the deserted streets.

 

“…doesn’t matter,” one of them was insisting, in a voice that was clearly meant to be commanding but came out as more of a plaintive whine. “It’s an order, same as any other. A large one. Means instant profit for you. A thousand units sold!”

 

The Kuati, a merchant with a narrow face and a fussy steel-grey beard, looked both irritated and bored. “I make profit on my wares from buyers who don’t come to my shop shouting demands,” he shot back. “I have no need of your orders to drive my business. I have told you all this and more.”

 

“What we’re offering is better than any of your buyers can.” 

 

“So you have said. But you make only promises. I do not believe them, and I have spent too many hours on this folly already.” The merchant held up a hand to forestall a retort. “Enough, I say, I have heard enough. I will take credits, and nothing else. No promises and no trades, I deal in neither. I will take payment, or you will get no shipments.”

 

“You wouldn’t dare treat us like this if - ”

 

“Enough, I say!” The merchant seemed to have finally reached the end of his patience. “I owe him nothing, and I owe you less. He has sent me much business, and for his sake I have tolerated your bleating. No more. I will take payment, or you will get nothing from me.”     

 

He retreated into his shop, slamming the door behind him, the locks clicking loudly and decisively into place.

 

The small group of men stood for a moment in the empty street, glaring impotently at the barred storefront, then turned away, muttering angrily.

 

“Myn.” Face murmured into his commlink.

 

“I’m here.” Donos’s low voice was just barely audible. 

 

“Follow them. You and Maher. If they so much as stop to take a piss in an alley, I want to know.”

 

“On it.” The comm went dead.

 

Beside him, Tyria was on her feet. “We need to move,” she whispered. “Me and Shalla. Or there won’t be enough time.”

 

He nodded. “Go. Stay in touch with Donos and Maher. Get in, get out, straight back to the skiff.”

 

She inclined her head in assent, and then she was gone too, disappearing through the hatch in the roof that led to the floors below.  

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

When the security transport drew up to the warehouse, Kell was more certain than ever that they could not possibly be in the right place. Signs in large clear letters were mounted atop each of the warehouses in the row, not all of them in Basic, but he knew the language well enough. On every one, the same word appeared, over and over again.

 

‘DROIDS.’

 

They were in the manufacturing sector. 

 

“Droids,” Phanan said. “Astromechs? Battledroids? What?”

 

Kell shook his head. “No military-grade AI is produced on the Orbital Ring. All on the offworld yards. For testing, and in case something goes wrong, they’re as far as possible from the trade posts and civilians. These are commercial models. Cleaners. Servers. Protocol droids. That sort of thing.”

 

Phanan nodded, a little wearily. “So…they’re after something being manufactured off the books?” he ventured. He did not sound as though he much believed it himself. 

 

Kell shrugged helplessly. “Maybe?” 

 

But that did not hold water, and they both knew it. An average droid manufacturer would simply not have the means or opportunity to manufacture illicit models on the side, particularly not on Kuat, with its draconian regulations and notoriously thorough monitoring. You could not use one business as a front for another on Kuat, not on the Ring. Paying off a handful of officials to look the other way would not work, and there was no anonymity among buyers. There were simply too many people watching, too many records, too many trails.  

 

Even Piggy had lost much of his quiet assurance. “We will have to try and find out,” he said, slowly. “They have been here again tonight, but they are gone now. All we can do is get inside.”

 

Dia summed it up in a word. “How?” The street, deserted as it was, was brightly lit, and there were security cams everywhere, with no doubt more than were not immediately visible. The huge warehouse doors looked strong enough to protect a bunker. 

 

Automatically, they looked at Piggy. Hunched over his console, he was deep in thought, which, ironically, manifested on his broad homely face as an especially vacant look. 

 

“How much time have we, before the guards wake?” he asked.

 

Phanan glanced at his chrono. “Two hours. Maybe a little more.” 

 

“Then we have only one option.”

 

Kell groaned softly. 

 

“Front door?”

 

“Front door.”

 

“Leaves a trail,” Phanan pointed out. 

 

“Which will lead to five security troopers who will remember nothing about tonight - or at least, nothing important,” Dia countered. “We don’t have a choice.”

 

He lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “You’re right. It’s not infallible, still.”

 

“Nothing ever is.” Kell fumbled under the console for the switchboard he knew must be there, though it was a long time since he had laid hands on one. “Not for us, anyway.”

 

The security override switch was small and discreet, tucked away in a place that would have been hard to hit accidentally. When Kell flicked it, the huge floodlights sweeping the streetfront froze in place, and a single, shrill alarm began to sound, echoing down from atop the sealed doors as, slowly, they began to slide open. 

 

“Is there any way to kill that?” Phanan yelled above the noise. 

 

The doors had not opened much, but they were wide enough to get through, at any rate. “There’s one,” Kell said. One-handed, he reached for the laser cannon mount, aimed, and fired. 

 

A panel above the doorway exploded in a shower of sparks; both the light and the clanging alarm shut down abruptly, and the doors creaked to a halt.  

 

“There are still cameras active,” Dia said. 

 

“I can’t deactivate them,” Kell admitted. “It’ll have to be the next best thing. Hold on.”

 

He paused only to make sure they were, then swung the transport forward and around with a sharp tug to the steering yoke. 

 

It skidded and twisted, fishtailing like a ponderous twisting snake, and then, with an impact that would have thrown them all clean against the far wall had Kell not issued his warning, slammed sidelong against the gate and slid forward with the painful screech of metal on metal. Kell shook off the ringing in his ears and got to his feet, wrenching a keycard from an almost invisible slot in the console in front of him. 

 

Phanan and Piggy were already at the door, heaving with the combined strength of muscle and cybernetics to haul it open.   

 

They were right in front of the crack in the warehouse doors. 

 

From a pocket in her jumpsuit, Dia produced a small grey tube. With a fingernail she flicked off the top, waited for a few long seconds, then threw it hard and accurately into the space between the transport roof and the warehouse doors. It exploded on contact, into a dense cloud of purple-black smoke that billowed up and around, streaming outwards into the night. 

 

At once, they slipped through the obscuring cloud into the warehouse.

 

On the wall was a scanner; Kell slapped the keycard he’d taken from the security transport on it and it glowed a reassuring green. It took only seconds to disable the interior cameras. Even with them off, he dared not risk turning on the main lights. Instead he produced a glow rod from his jacket and clicked it on; the others did the same, and the lights threw long, attenuated shadows onto the dusty floor. 

 

“Let’s move.”

 

Silently they spread out, and began to search. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The merchant had left shortly after his clients had, grumbling under his breath about fools and time wasters and taking his time securing locks and activating sensors. Hidden in the shadows above, Face had watched him and tried not to let his imagination run wild about what the man might have for sale under his grubby, unassuming roof.   

 

When he had gone, Falynn emerged first, dropping lightly to the street and scanning it in both directions. Then she waved them down.

 

“Surveillance is still down,” she said, then hesitated. “Face…this seems too easy. Have you looked at the place? Locks easy to break, no eye in the sky. That sensor covers the main entrance but not the service door at the back.”

 

He grimaced. “I know. Truth be told, nothing about this feels right. But…”

 

“…but we have to look,” she finished, with a sigh. 

 

The locks were as easy to break as she had said; the butt of his blaster did for the first, and her vibroblade sliced the second clean off its mountings, leaving the old-fashioned hinged door hanging lopsidedly open. 

 

Face did not know exactly what he was afraid he might see inside. A torrent of possibilities had been rushing through the back of his mind for hours. Even still, when the ceiling light flickered on, he blinked in confusion and stared around him, not quite trusting the evidence of his own eyes. 

 

Falynn found her voice first. “What the— ”

 

“It looks…like maintenance supplies.” The newest Wraith with the brown eyes had picked up a container from a flat stacked full of them and was reading the label. “For disinfecting and de-odorising,” he read out. “For use on all surfaces. Dilute before use.” 

 

“Solvent.” Falynn hefted another jar. “For grease stains and organic materials.”

 

Face shook his head, as though that would help everything start making sense. “It’s all like this.” There were products stacked all over, but even at a glance he could see they were much the same. Polishes and cleansers, solvents and sprays. Cleaning supplies, maintenance supplies. A few bore labels warning of toxic contents, but they were the kind of labels that household products were required to carry to protect themselves from liability should some child swallow some of the contents and make itself sick. 

 

“They can’t have been after this stuff.” Falyn said decidedly. “It has to be a front. We need to take samples. Get them analysed. There’s no way any of this is what it says it is.” 

 

“Right.” From his pack, he drew a container of empty sample vials. “Do it. A sample from everything you can find, and fast.” But even as he filled vial after vial with fluids in bright colours that smelled of antiseptics and bleach, he could not shake the conviction that the analysis would most likely show them to be exactly what they claimed to be. 

 

He was still lost in thought when his commlink buzzed.   

 

“Face?” It was Kell, and his voice sounded odd. “Where are you?”

 

“The machine shop. Where are you?”

 

“The warehouse our marks have been going to. Only…”

 

“…it doesn’t have what you expected?” Face finished for him.

 

“No,” Kell said, slowly. “Not even remotely.”

 

Face fought back the wild urge to laugh. “What do you have?”

 

“Droids,” came the slightly disbelieving response. “But…domestic droids. Cleaners, protocol units, custodian and compactor units. Even a few clowns. Nothing else. No trace of anything else. We’ve searched the thrice-damned place from top to bottom, checked and triple checked the records to be sure this is where they came.”

 

“Have we got a story for you.” Face looked over at Falynn, who was rooting through a giant storage bin with a stubborn expression on her face, clearly convinced there was something hidden to find if only she looked hard enough. “Get everything on record, and get back to the shuttle.”

 

“Face?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“I’m very confused. Really, really, very confused.”

 

“You and me both,” he admitted, staring at the stylised animated sponge cartoon on the solvent bottle he held, which proclaimed in a speech bubble that it ‘gets out even the TOUGHEST stains! Gentle on EVERY kind of skin!’ “You and me both.” 

 


	15. Smokescreens - Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Han Solo gears for a fight, and more puzzle pieces fall into place - or do they?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm experimenting with breaking up a single long chapter into 3 parts, which means I can update more often and also potentially pace things a bit better, given all the threads that need to be kept going. Feedback on this is welcome; if it doesn't work I might go back to putting up longer chapters less often. 
> 
> As ever, thanks for reading, and I remain grateful for any and all comments and feedback. (I've had some truly lovely comments which keep me coming back to work on this on the many days when there are tons of other things to do and it seems futile and wasteful to spend time on writing silly stories!)

There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.

It has no windows, and the door swings,

Dry bones can harm no one.

T.S. Eliot, _The Waste Land_

 

 

He had been on active duty aboard the star cruiser for just over a week, and already General Han Solo was beyond ready to rip off the stiff and starched uniform that was his bane. And burn it, ideally. 

 

Even his reflection in the many shiny transparisteel panels and high-mirror-shine surfaces of the ship - which was newer, and correspondingly shinier, than any craft he’d ever had command of - irritated him. It was disconcertingly like looking at a stranger, one who unaccountably wore his face, though its expression never moved much beyond an unhappy glower. 

 

Catching sight of himself in yet another glossy panel on one of the bridge consoles, he swallowed a sigh. He had been a pirate for near on 30 years and a spacer since he was barely older than a boy, and the trappings of rank would always sit poorly on him. 

 

A polite cough sounded from behind him, and he turned away from himself. “Captain.”

 

“General Solo.” Aitor Caetan, his brevet captain, was a slender, wiry human who always seemed ever so slightly uncomfortable in his presence. A soldier since he’d been old enough to enlist, he walked, talked, and even ate and drank with an air of brisk, earnest efficiency. His men had been heard to quip that the captain slept on a perfect diagonal in his bunk, ironed the creases into his uniforms himself, and counted it a personal failing if he did not wake at least a full minute before his alarms. 

 

He was, in many ways, everything that Han Solo himself would never be. 

 

For all that, he could not help but like the man. Caetan worked tirelessly and loved his work, he was exacting but fair to those who served under him, and above all, he knew ships. _Wayfarer_   was officially Solo’s ship, but he was the _Millennium Falcon_ ’s captain and she was the only ship he loved. Caetan was no strategist; the current arrangement, where he saw to it that his General’s orders were carried out, suited them both very well. 

 

Even so, Solo could never quite shake the conviction that Caetan wished he had a more conventional commanding officer. 

 

“We are in position,” Caetan was saying. “We beamed the transmissions as soon as we were in range.”

 

“No response?”

 

“None, General.”

 

“Give them one more chance. If the governor doesn’t respond, tell him he’ll either give me answers or he’ll have a dozen gunships on his doorstep, and he’ll be able to think things over from a holding cell.” 

 

“Aye, General.” Caetan gestured to the communications officer, a Mon Calamari with enormous, liquid black eyes. 

 

“There is an encrypted transmission for you, General,” she said in her whispery-soft voice. “From the _Wild Karrde_.” 

 

“Thanks, Baida. I’ll take it in my quarters.” 

 

Said quarters were directly off the bridge - he’d taken over a small suite of rooms meant for one of the deck officers, having taken one look at the massive suite that was his by rank and hated it on sight. With Leia needed on Coruscant and unable to join him, it had seemed much too big and much too empty. He’d given it to Caetan, who had in turn handed it on to the Chief Medical officer, who had his wife (the communications officer) and their children on board and had been grateful for the space.

 

Inside, on the small communications console, a light glowed blue. When he activated it, the smuggler chief’s face filled the screen. 

 

“Solo.” One heavy eyebrow rose, just fractionally. “You look well. Officerly, dare I say.”

 

“Bite your tongue.” Solo dropped into a seat and ripped the uniform collar open, sending the top button flying. He ignored it. “What have you got for me?”

 

Talon Karrde smiled. “How much time do you have?”

 

“What I have is a craven ex-Imp - or so he’d have us believe, anyway - hiding under his bed refusing to respond to my transmissions even though I’m here with a star cruiser and several dozen fighters on his account. Well, his and the crew of anarchists armed to the teeth talking about burning cities to ash. Both are going to need attention pretty damn soon.” 

 

“Such are the cares of a Republic general, General.” Seeing Solo’s scowl, he continued quickly, “There’s much and more you need to know, but most of it can wait, at least until this business of yours is done. I imagine you’ll hear most of it from your wife - ”

 

“ - after she hears it from you.”

 

“Not necessarily. I’d not speak to any mere underling, not least when the information is for the ears of the High Councillor, but Iella Wessiri is a more than worthy go-between. Nor will mine be the only briefing she’ll hear. Antilles is filing his report as we speak, and Mara’s time on Tatooine has not been wasted either.” 

 

There was a gleam in the smuggler chief’s eye; Solo smirked. “Good to know.”

 

“She’s on her way back to Borleias now.”

 

“Alone?” 

 

“In a manner of speaking.”

 

“So he’s…” 

 

“Less than half a day behind her.” 

 

“Hmm.” He studied Karrde for a long moment. He was a good enough sabaac player to recognize another master of the game, and Karrde was better than most. “Your man, Chin. How is he?”

 

“Stable. But no better,” Karrde admitted.

 

“No worse, though?”

 

“No. I owe Dr. Seldes Kest a debt. Perhaps for more than just that.”

 

It was Solo’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Go on.”

 

“I believe I may have stumbled across an asset of not inconsiderable value in her medcentre. Entirely by chance. A former drone of the Glactic Research consortium. One who is so relieved to be free of them that her loyalty will be nigh-unshakeable.”

 

“A doctor? What makes her so valuable?”

 

“At present, I am not certain. But I think, in the not-far-distant future…” Karrde stroked his immaculate beard, and appeared to be weighing his words for a long moment. “Call it intuition,” he said finally. 

 

Solo snorted. “And only that, I’m sure.” 

 

Karrde spread his hands in a gesture of conciliation. “Not entirely,” he conceded. “But it’s a story for another time.” In a deceptively casual tone he went on, “Perhaps another small wager might be in order? If you doubt my…intuition?”

 

“Not me.” His lopsided grin flashed out. “My betting days are done.”

 

“If you truly expect me to believe that, you have a poorer opinion of me than I deserve.”

 

“I’ve got nothing left to wager with, Talon, I’m all in. The _Falcon_ is mine - and it’ll be a warm summer’s day in Hoth before I wager her again - but all my other assets that are worth a damn are marital. Financial and otherwise.”

 

“It’s a secure man indeed who can make such an admission,” Karrde said, reflectively. “But that is an accurate assessment of your possessions, it’s true.”

 

“I married the closest thing the galaxy has to a goddess. I’m as secure as I need to be.” 

 

“And how you convinced a woman the like of Leia Organa to have you remains a mystery for the ages.”  

 

“Speaking of convincing.” Solo leaned forward slightly in his seat, having decided - as he did in 9 situations out of every 10 - to be blunt. “How did you convince Luke to get involved in this?”

 

If Karrde was taken aback at the abruptness of the segue, he gave no sign of it. “I did nothing of the sort. He told me as much, when he contacted me from the _Jade’s Fire_ after it was attacked over Ororos.” 

 

“He didn’t say why?”

 

“Nor did I ask. In fact,” he said pointedly, steepling his fingers, “I’m surprised you’re asking now. He would tell you himself, if you wanted to know.” 

 

“He’s been with Mara,” Solo pointed out. 

 

Sudden comprehension dawned in the deep gray eyes. “Ah. And you wished to…”

 

“Let the chips fall,” he finished. “I certainly wouldn’t want to be accused of affecting the outcome. This is the only wager I’ve made in years, I’m not losing on a technicality.”

 

Karrde laughed at that, a short, low bark of a laugh. “How very unlike you, to concern yourself with rules.”

 

“I was a smuggler. Rules of chance are pretty much the only rules I care about.”

 

“‘Was,’ you say? And what are you now?”

 

His grin broadened. “Much the same thing as you.”

 

“Hardly. I am no servant of the Republic.”

 

“No, of course not,” Solo shook his head in mock self-reproach. “What ever could have made me think that about you, I can’t imagine.”  

 

Karrde sighed. “Enough of this. I have work to do. And you…”

 

The smile faded from Solo’s face. “I have a battle to win.”     

 

“They will not negotiate? You outnumber them two to one in men and ships. They cannot hope to win.”

 

“There’s nothing they want that negotiations will give them,” he said grimly. “They’ve lost. They know it. They want to burn this world to its bedrock, so no-one else wins either.” 

 

Karrde nodded, and in his normally impassive face there was both understanding and something that might have been the shadow of a memory. “They would not be the first,” was all he said.

 

“And they won’t be the last.”

 

“No,” Karrde agreed. “Good luck, General. We will speak again soon.” 

 

The transmission winked out, and the words that had not been spoken hung in the empty air for a long moment. Some words were never spoken aloud by men such as them, who, for whatever else they might become, would always remain pirates in their truest selves, with a vein of belief in the ways of luck and fortune that ran dark and deep, who knew in their heart of hearts that to speak of certain things was to damn them.   

 

_Stay alive._

 

And then the console flashed again. 

 

He activated it. “Yes?”

 

It was Caetan. “We have a response from the planet, General. And Commander Horn’s X-wing has just docked. He will be at the bridge shortly.”

 

“I’m on my way.” 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

The cadet was gangling and awkward, a shuffling boy with badly-dyed hair and spotty skin who was failing manifestly at hiding how terrified he was of her. Mara had switched off her commlink, so he’d had to come and find her in the training centre to deliver a message. The fact that he’d entered to find her with saber lit, standing over the scorched remains of no less than six remotes, had likely not helped matters. When she’d turned around she’d seen him standing there, slack-jawed and saucer-eyed, and when she’d asked him what he wanted he’d opened and closed his mouth soundlessly for a few moments, as if she’d asked the question from behind her blade, or with the muzzle of her blaster pressed to his head. 

 

It had taken a few tries, as he stuttered and stammered and tripped over his own words and Mara waited with crossed arms, suppressing her irritation with considerable effort, before he could get out what he’d been sent to tell her.

 

“…and, and…General Antilles says he will meet you in the briefing room. The same one. Um, I th-th-think that’s everything.” He could not seem to make eye contact with her, and addressed every word he said to the ground at her feet or the empty air a foot or so to her left, his eyes darting back and forth as though fearful that if he looked at one spot for too long she might attack him. 

 

“Who else will be there? Besides him?” She’d made an actual effort to sound as non-threatening as possible, but the boy flinched as though at a whip crack. 

 

“Who - else? Um…I-I-I don’t know. They didn’t tell me. I mean, the General didn’t. Major Jansen didn’t either. But he didn’t say anything. Nothing at all.” 

 

She sighed. “All right. You can go. Thank you,” she added, a little stiffly. 

 

Looking profoundly relieved, the boy fled without another word. Mara watched him go, an odd feeling twisting in her gut. She had no illusions about her own reputation, nor had she ever believed the reassurances she’d been given - by everyone from Karrde to Skywalker to Organa-Solo herself - that the people would forget, would begin to see her as they saw her, an ally and a friend. 

 

It wasn’t true. It probably never would be.  

 

_What do you care? Since when does it matter to you what they think of you?_

 

 _I don’t_ , she reminded herself, coldly. _And_ _it doesn’t matter._

 

She shoved her things into her bag, stripping off her sweat-stained shirt and replacing it with a fresh one. She retied her braid, then left the high vaulted room, sending the detritus of the destroyed remotes flying into the trash compactor chute with a wave of her hand as the doors slid shut behind her. 

 

_It doesn’t matter at all._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Caetan opened his mouth when he saw his General stride onto the Wayfarer’s bridge, but closed it again without saying anything. A handful of the other officers, who had served with Han Solo since the days of the rebellion, exchanged brief, knowing smirks. 

 

“Is this what they mean by ‘dress for the job you want’?” Corran Horn inquired with a grin, surveying the plain jacket and dark pants Solo was now wearing, the latter blazoned with the Corellian bloodstripe down either side. “You keep doing this, you’ll never get that Admiralship, you know.”

 

“And what a tragedy that’d be,” Solo grunted, lowering himself into the Captain’s chair. “Dorset, Todra. Good to see you.”

 

“And you.” Dorset Konnair’s profusion of blue tattoos looked almost black in the dim light below the viewport where she stood. In the space beyond was the rest of the fleet, a dozen or so waiting gunships, to be joined by the fighters that were still safely stowed in bays on the _Wayfarer._

 

“How do they let you get away with dressing like that?” Todra Mayn demanded, sounding aggrieved. “If I show up with my rank patch slightly off-centre I get told off.”

 

He grinned at her. “It’s my natural charm.”

 

She gave him a withering look. “Are you using it now? Could have fooled me.”

 

“You can wear what you want under my command, Todra, it’s no skin off my nose.” She rolled her eyes at him, and he laughed. 

 

“General.” Caetan wore a look of mild disapproval, but, as ever, kept his true opinions to himself. Instead he said, “There has been a transmission from the governor’s palace. I can have Baida play it for you, but - ”

 

“ - but we can spare you the time.” Corran jerked his head scornfully at the screen, on which a face was frozen where the recorded message had been paused. “We heard it. It’s close on ten minutes of grovelling and apologies - all about as convincing as lipstick on a gundark - but the long and short of it is that the esteemed governor has nothing useful to offer us. He doesn’t know anything, he can’t say anything, and what troops he has he’s keeping around him to protect his own miserable neck.”

 

The figure on the screen was a sallow, long-faced man with pale, watery-looking eyes and sagging jowls. Even mid-speech, his cringing smile seemed spurious. He wore elaborate robes edged in gilt braid and festooned with ornaments; it was impossible not to imagine him clinking as he moved. Solo looked at the image for a moment and shook his head, muttering a Corellian invective under his breath.

 

“Come again, General?” Caetan inquired. 

 

“I said, that’s fine,” he said quickly. “I don’t need to hear it, you’re right. Waste of time. Our plan of attack stays as is.”

 

“We’re ready,” Dorset said. She looked at Todra, who nodded. 

 

“Corran?” Solo looked at him. He did not seem tired, but… “You’ve just done a 13-hour jump from Borleias. Are you -”

 

Corran gave a dismissive wave. “I’ve spent 13 hours in a very relaxing hibernation trance. Whistler did all the work getting us here. Don’t you worry your head about me.”    

 

“All right.” He straightened in his chair; out of the corner of his eye he saw Chewbacca lumber onto the bridge. One huge paw rose in a resonable approximation of a thumbs-up. “Get your pilots to their ships. We’re out in one standard hour.” 

 

“‘We’”? Todra repeated. Then she saw the Wookiee, and sighed. “No offense, General, but are we going to have to crawl behind your freighter the whole run?”

 

He heard Corran snort with laughter on his way out. “Crawl? No. Keep up, possibly.” He flashed her a grin. “If you can.”


	16. Smokescreens - Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure if anyone's still reading this, but I'm still going with it. Life got in the way of updates for a while, but it's back and moving along. 
> 
> (It's still very much AU, so the events of the new trilogy, which I do love, don't change anything. That isn't the timeline I'm writing my stories in.)

 

It would not have taken a Jedi to sense the general air of disenchantment and bone-weariness that hung over the room, and Mara had the distinct feeling that, despite the nagging restlessness that had dogged her since she’d returned to the base, she was by far and away the most well-rested person there. The Wraiths had given up all pretense of formality and were slouched gloomily in their seats. Many were still wearing flight suits; they had arrived on planet less than an hour before. Wes Jansen and Hobbie Klivian flanked Antilles in his command chair at the front of the room. Jansen had a datapad in his hands and was flicking the power switch on, then off, then on again, without looking at it or anything in particular, his usually lively brown eyes fixed on the bare tabletop. 

 

Iella Wessiri looked down on them from the leftmost viewscreen; she too was less composed than usual, if only fractionally. Fine lines of tiredness were visible at the corners of her eyes and her hair no longer sat in its neat braid, pulled back instead into a plain but immaculate knot at the nape of her neck. 

 

A full five minutes after her screen had activated, Iella allowed relief to show for a fraction of a second on her face as the panel opposite hers suddenly glowed into life and Karrde appeared, the bridge of the _Wild Karrde_ clearly visible behind him.

 

“My apologies,” he said, a little gruffly, before anyone else could speak. His workmanlike flight clothes were rumpled and his eyes slightly bloodshot; he had clearly been getting no more sleep than the rest of them. 

 

“We’ll make this quick,” Iella said. 

 

Face Loran smiled ruefully. “Won’t take much time to tell what we found,” he said. “I can only apologise…”

 

Iella didn’t let him finish. “No,” she said, with a decisive shake of her head. “You did what was asked of you. I am confident that were there more to be found, you would have found it.” 

 

Loran bowed. 

 

“There wasn’t all that much more for us on Tatooine,” Antilles said, wearily. “Two men are dead and we don’t yet know why. All the information that may be of some actual use we owe entirely to Captain Jade.” 

 

A brief, knowing smile crossed Karrde’s lips. She could feel the eyes of the Wraiths on her, and faint traces of their thoughts drifted through to her - curiosity mixed with wariness, and appraisal.

 

She was certain that Skywalker’s name would follow, but it didn’t. 

 

Before anyone had the chance to bring it up, she said, “I’ve handed over everything I found. All of it will need to be combed through, but from what I saw, I can tell you now I’m certain the compound is a transit zone.”

 

She had the Wraiths’ full attention, they looked much more alert now. “What did you see?” Loran asked.

 

“It was more what I didn’t,” she said. “No supplies of any kind. No fresh water, and only a single vaporator on site. No containment units with life support. There’s no way for captives to be kept alive - the place can’t support more than the dozen or so beings in its staff quarters.” 

 

“Transit for what?” 

 

“From the look of them, drugs. I couldn’t tell which ones. And there’s always the possibility that they’re something else entirely, and pharma vials were the easiest way to transport them.” 

 

“Spice?” Phanan inquired.

 

She shrugged. “I don’t think so. But I’d rather wait for the analysis results instead of speculating.” 

 

“We found the same vials in use in the spaceports,” Antilles said. “For what - we’re not entirely sure.”

 

He glanced at Mara for the briefest moment and she understood; the Wraiths had not been told the real reason for his being on Tatooine and were not going to be told now. She’d expected as much; these were deeper, significantly murkier waters.

 

She hadn’t, however, expected him to look Face Loran directly in the eye and say, “You may as well know that my time on Tatooine was spent working a double mission. One’s classified until I’m convinced it should be otherwise. You’ll be told on a need-to-know basis only, which could mean you’ll be told nothing at all.”

 

They processed that for a moment; Dia Passik at least looked like she had many things she wanted to say, but she stayed silent. Mara knew without turning around that a few of the Wraiths were still looking not at Antilles but at her. Some, like the huge Thakwash, were staring at her with open curiosity, but others, including the two youngest and newest members of the squadron, seemed almost to be sizing her up - to what end, she didn’t know. She could have found out with relative ease, but some nameless instinct stayed her, preventing her from reaching out and into their unprotected minds. A flicker of unwelcome awareness sprang up that she’d have had no problem doing exactly that in the not too distant past, and she refused to think about what had changed, ignoring the memory hovering at the very edge of her thoughts of a night on a cold, windy rooftop.

 

It was Loran who spoke first. Despite Iella’s reassurance, he still looked as though it pained him to say the words. “We found a range of chemicals at the locations on Kuat,” he said. “There are samples of everything at the labs. But I have a feeling that they’re all exactly what they’re labelled as, which puts us right back at square one, really.”

 

“Perhaps,” Iella said, and she looked thoughtful. Then her gaze shifted to the Twi’lek woman. “Dia. You have something to add?”

 

For a moment it looked as though she would deny it, but then, all in a rush, the words tumbled out, and Dia Passik’s voice shook as she said them. “I…I just keep thinking about the ships, the ones in Kuat space. We tracked the crews but not the ships, we didn’t even go anywhere near them. We don’t know what - who - might have been aboard, if there were beings we could have rescued, if - if there were beings who needed us, and we - we abandoned them.” She stopped short, perhaps fearing she’d said too much; crossed a line. Her lekku twitched.

 

“I understand,” Iella said, gently. “The mission parameters were not set arbitrarily, though. The ships are cargo freighters, and are not classed for passenger transport.”

 

“It’s possible to retrofit cargo craft to carry living beings,” Dia countered. “Especially if they’re transporting slaves, they wouldn’t trouble themselves over comfort and safety, there would be hardly any modifications at all,” she added bitterly. 

 

“True,” Iella said. “And that had not escaped my attention, I assure you. I assume Moranda Savitch told you she had obtained records of the crew purchases on Kuat?”

 

“Yes.” Face Loran looked a little confused at this apparent non sequitur. “But - ”

 

“Thanks to her, we knew before you reached the system that the supplies being sent back to those ships were minimal. Even allowing for very conservative rationing, they are sufficient only to sustain the crews themselves, and for no more than a day or two at most.”

 

Dia nodded slowly, the significance of that settling in. “They could chain them in a hold, but they’d need them fit for work, they couldn’t starve them,” she said, almost to herself. Then she looked up at Iella, a little abashed. “I am sorry, my lady. I should not have doubted.”

 

“Nothing to forgive,” Iella said firmly. “I am glad I could reassure you. Now,” she looked around at them, “I understand that analysis has already begun on the samples from Tatooine and Kuat.”

 

Phanan nodded. “Med staff are on it - everyone that’s not needed on urgent care. I’ll be joining them myself soon, it’s a considerable amount of work.” 

 

A few of the other Wraiths shot him slightly odd looks at this, but he ignored them. 

 

“It comes to this.” Wedge Antilles rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “There’s a glut of data from the Tatooine facility that needs sifting through, a few hundred samples that need analysing, and a combat situation that needs to be resolved before we can do anything else.” 

 

“Ororos?” Loran asked.

 

“ _Wayfarer_ and the squadrons have reached the system,” Karrde said. “General Solo is readying the strike as we speak.”

 

“We’ve all been working or flying more or less non-stop for the last several days; I need you -” Wedge waved a hand in the Wraiths’ general direction “- and my command team rested for whatever’s next. I’m putting you all on Code Grey. Confined to quarters, keep your comms handy. Get some sleep. Consider it an order.” 

 

“Questions?” Iella asked. No-one responded. It was only too clear that the order had been entirely welcome. “All right,” she said. “Wraiths dismissed.” As they began to file out, she called, “Phanan, you need not assist the medcentre team yet, you need rest too.”

 

“It’s fine,” he said, a little too quickly, and this time Face Loran’s smirk was obvious. Iella raised an eyebrow. 

 

“All right,” she said. “If you’re sure.” 

 

“Your new recruit, she’s been assigned to the analysis team, hasn’t she?” Loran directed his question to Karrde, in a voice that was several shades too innocent to be entirely convincing. The portion of Phanan’s face that was not made of metal reddened almost imperceptibly.

 

“She is. She is an affiliate of the New Republic now, though, not my organisation.” Only someone who knew him very well would have been able to see the amusement in Karrde’s grey eyes. “She has more experience than most of Dr Kest’s team put together, though unfortunately that’s likely down to being systematically overworked for a great many years at the Imperial Research facilities. She agreed to assist as soon as she was asked.”

 

“Admirable,” Loran said. The smirk was back on his face, and Phanan seemed suddenly deeply interested in one of the stone floor tiles. “The - ah, team, will be glad of her presence, I’m sure.” He gave Karrde an abbreviated bow, a much deeper one to Iella, then nodded courteously at Mara and left the room. Phanan followed without looking at any of them.

 

When the door had slid shut behind them, Karrde said, “I hope you won’t take offense if I suggest you might do well to follow your own orders, General.” 

 

Antilles managed a shadow of a smile. “I don’t have much choice.” 

“I will be incommunicado for some time after this,” Karrde said. None of them asked why; it would have been entirely pointless. “Mara will know how to reach me, if for some reason it is of vital importance that you do so.” He glanced behind him, where the huge Togorian, H’sishi, had materialised and was waiting expectantly. “I see that I am needed. I hope I will be able to contribute more when I see you again. Good luck.” A brief salute to Iella, and another flash of an enigmatic smile in Mara’s direction, and he was gone. 

 

Mara rose at once. “I’m going back to the training room.”

 

Iella nodded. “There’s not much to do but wait,” she sighed. “Leia’s in contact with the _Falcon_ , I’m about to join her now.”

 

Janson and Klivian followed her out; Antilles remained where he was, perhaps to speak with his wife for a few more moments in privacy. They gave her brief nods of farewell before sloping off down the passageway that led to the Rogues’ wing of the base. 

 

She was passing the cadets’ mess hall, ignoring the blatant stares and whispers that she had, with a certain tired resignation, come to expect, when the sensation hit: a flood of warmth and light and familiarity, a mind reaching tentatively for hers.

 

_Mara?_

 

She quickened her pace; suddenly desperate to leave the gawping flock behind. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the yellow-haired cadet that had been sent to find her in the training room, now surrounded by his eagerly whispering friends. 

 

And then the base faded away and she could see him, in the X-wing’s cockpit, surrounded by hyperspace static, and visibly apprehensive at how she might react to his reaching for her. 

 

_Where are you?_ she sent, the safest thing that came to mind. 

 

_Leaving Tatooine_. _On my way to you._ He hesitated, and she projected as much exasperation as she could through the link. _Just tell me, Skywalker._

 

_Something is about to happen._

 

_To me?_

 

_I don’t think so. It was the system I saw. Pyria._

 

_‘Something’ doesn’t give me much to go on._

 

_If I knew more, I’d tell you._ The old, hunted expression had returned to his eyes; the look she had come to recognise as the dread of what he could not completely see. There was also hurt, and she recognised that too.

 

_I know you would,_ she sent, and his expression softened. 

 

_Have you -_

 

_I can’t sense anything from here._ But that wasn’t entirely true, and with extreme reluctance she admitted, _I’ve been on edge. But I don’t know why._

 

He considered that for a moment, and though it should have been impossible, Mara could feel his mental shields expand and knew that, once again, he was keeping something from her. For a moment she considered challenging him, but almost at once the voice in her head was laughing. _Going to give him hell for not telling you everything? How_ ** _very_** _unfair, when_ ** _you_** _tell_ ** _him_** _everything…_

 

“Shut up,” she whispered aloud.

 

_What?_ he asked, confused.

 

_That was for a protocol droid,_ she lied.

 

_Are you all right?_

 

She rolled her eyes, and saw his smile. _I’m fine._

 

_You said you were on edge._

 

_It’s nothing._

 

_Maybe. Maybe not. Try to focus into it, find the source._

 

That was the absolute last thing she intended to do, but she nodded stiffly. 

 

_Just stay safe, all right?_

 

She shot him another wave of exasperation. _I always do. Stop nagging._

 

The smile curved wickedly up, into a very un-Jedi-master-like grin. _I always do._

 

With that, he let go, extricating himself from her mind, and she was back in a nondescript corridor of Blackmoon base, having somehow ended up standing in front of one of the enormous floor-to-ceiling transparisteel windows looking out over the dense, lush forest beyond. 

 

 

 

* * *

__

 

 

For once in her long and storied history, the _Millennium Falcon_ had emerged from a prolonged spell of inactivity into immediate and flawless life in _Wayfarer_ ’s departure bay. As much as he loved her, Han Solo did not entirely trust that this state of affairs might not be too good to be true, and as a precaution had chosen, over the stammering protests of his brevet captain, to accompany the slightly depleted Rogue Sqadron on a quick reconnaissance of the flatlands surrounding the Imperial holdout fortress. 

 

_Wayfarer_ , with Caetan at her helm, had now disappeared behind them, waiting beyond the planet’s ionosphere. The _Falcon_ soared over fields and hedgerows, just low enough for her scanners to function. Here and there low rolling hills broke through the flatlands, and small settlements clustered at the intersection points of the land roads that, as on most primarily agrarian worlds, were still used here. Repulsor craft pollutants damaged crops; farmers tended to prefer ground vehicles.

 

It might have been their presence - an Imperial stronghold it might have been, but Ororos had never seen active combat, and the sight of a bulk cruiser at the head of a formation of Rebel Alliance blazoned X-wings was one few if any of its residents were likely to have seen before - or something else, but fields and roads both were conspicuously empty.

 

“Tycho, you seeing this?” said Corran’s voice over the open comm.

 

He was flying level with the _Falcon_ at her starboard side, keeping in Solo’s field of vision. In mirror position to port was Tycho Celchu, acting Rogue Leader in Wedge Antilles’ absence, and even at that distance Solo could see that he was frowning. 

 

An ancient-looking cluster of towers had come into view below them, squat and round, that reminded Solo uncomfortably of Jabba the Hutt’s palace on Tatooine, though it had four towers instead of three. They appeared to have been carved from the rock on which they sat, and augmented over time with extensions and reinforcements of more modern material. It was the sixth structure of its kind they had seen so far on the planet, and, as far as Solo could make out, was more or less identical to the others, down to being completely deserted. 

 

“I see it.” 

 

Beside him, Chewbacca grunted. _The field. At the foot of the cliff._

 

It looked like a rockfall, and had Corran not pointed it out, Solo knew he would not have given it a second glance. The scanners had passed it over already: as with the fortress above, there were no signs of either life-forms or technology. At first glance it looked as though a section of cliff had simply given way, cascading down and burying much of the fallow green-grey field below in rubble and coulders. 

 

“What about it?” he asked, suppressing annoyance that all three of them had apparently seen something he couldn’t. 

 

“It doesn’t look natural,” Tycho explained. “That breakaway is too neat.”

 

“Those are scorch marks,” Solo said, realising. “The black stripes…”

 

“…from sunken charges,” Corran confirmed. “I’d stake my life on it. That was deliberate.” 

 

“None of our scanners have anything,” Tycho said. “You think we need to get down there?”

“No, but…it feels important.” Corran’s frustration with himself was clear in his voice. “I just can’t tell exactly why.”

 

“This is a Jedi thing,” Solo said. It wasn’t a question. 

 

“Luke would know what it is,” Corran admitted. “He’s always telling me to work on this kind of thing. Reading signals though the Force better.”

 

“But you prefer showing off with a lightsaber,” Rogue 7, Inyri Forge, spoke up unexpectedly, and laughter echoed through more than one of the patched-in fighter channels.

 

“I do not _show off,_ I - ”

 

“All right, that’s enough,” Tycho cut in, in a tone that brooked no argument, though Solo could see he was trying not to laugh. “I suggest we come back to it. Karrde mentioned that there would likely be cached Imperial weaponry on planet that they don’t want us to know about. An underground bunker in an old fortress would be exactly the sort of place they’d use.”

 

“You think they’ve just gone dark, waiting for us to leave?” said Aril Nunb’s voice through her channel.

 

“It’s possible,” Tycho said. “Corran, are you sure you’re not seeing anything the scanners can’t?”

 

“No,” Corran admitted. “I can’t really see anything. It’s just a feeling.”

 

“I’m not going to dismiss Jedi hunches,” Solo said. “But Tycho’s right. We’ll need to come back. And bring something that can move a shitload of rocks.” Once more he heard the Rogues’ laughter over the comms. “Two more clicks, and we’re heading back. This is about as far out as they’d be able to launch anything that could take us by surprise.” 

 

“Roger that.” Corran pulled ahead by a length, then, with Tycho close on his tail, shot forward, leaving them behind, searching for what only he would be able to see.

 

The recon flight had been Leia’s idea, though Corran, Tycho, Todra Mayn and Solo himself had been considering similar precautions. His strike plan had been designed with a single heavily defended target in mind; the old cliff forts that dotted the planet’s surface had, they had been assured, been abandoned for a year or more, but Leia trusted the governor’s word no more than Solo himself did. Far better to make sure for themselves that no garrisons remained except the men they already knew were there, who had barricaded themselves into the single fortress they held as soon as Wayfarer and her fleet had entered the atmosphere. The recon was a way to make sure the vicinity was as clear of hidden threats as it should have been. 

 

So far, all had been as they’d hoped. Signs of the long years of Imperial dominance were everywhere - they’d even seen a few fields shaped into Imperial crests - but the cliff forts lay abandoned, and as far as their scanners and Corran’s intuition could tell, every farming community was exactly that. They could be confident that no unexpected attacks would come their way, and, heavily defended though it might be, a single Imperial fortress was not a daunting prospect for the likes of Han Solo and Rogue Squadron. 

 

For all that, Solo was uneasy, and, like Corran, he couldn’t put his finger on why. He had no Jedi foresight, but his own smuggler’s gut instinct had never failed him, and it was nagging at him now.

 

As the lead snubfighters banked, preparing to return, he pulled the Falcon into a turn and deactivated the commlink. Chewbacca, ever perceptive, barked a question. 

 

“I dunno,” he replied, honestly. “I have a bad feeling about this.” 

 

He remembered Leia’s reassurances, and it warmed him, as the thought of her always did. And Luke - Luke who was deeply immersed in something he was unusually reluctant to talk about, but who could see even further and deeper than Leia and who had told Solo that he, too, had seen nothing on Ororos that might mean injury or death for him or the Rogues. 

 

The two X-wings had curved back; they had reached the edge of the sweep zone. The preliminaries were at an end. 

 

“Time to go,” Solo said, and Chewbacca roared; half battle cry, half encouragement, and as though in response, the X-wings behind him revved, rising up into formation like the wings of a single enormous bird taking flight.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The walk from the high-security briefing room to the medcentre was not a short one, and Ton Phanan had known even before the door closed behind him that he had little hope of making it unnoticed. He’d held out a faint hope that the need for sleep would override his squadron’s need to give him a hard time, but that had been a wish too far, and it had taken the better part of the walk to shake off Loran and the others. Finally, however, they’d grown bored of teasing him and departed, to his profound relief. 

 

The centre was nearly deserted when he arrived - no surprise, considering the lateness of the hour. A few cleaner droids zoomed back and forth, and he could see the Chief Medical Officer herself in her office through one of its large windows. She caught sight of him as he passed and smiled at him, a little absently, the lids drooping slightly over her enormous eyes the only sign of how tired she, too, was. 

 

He saw her before she saw him - little wonder, as she was absorbed in working an apparatus that he knew from experience to be both delicate and temperamental. Kyah Imani’s dark hair was pulled back from her temples into an untidy twist from which strands and tendrils had already begun to escape. She was dressed exactly the same as she had when he’d first seen her, but the air of defeat and despondency that had shrouded her was now gone, and it made her look like an entirely different person. 

 

“Doctor.” Her eyes, when they met his over the bubbling and smoking array of tubes and retorts, held a sparkle that had most definitely not been there before. “I heard the Wraiths had returned from Kuat. Shouldn’t you be in bed?” 

 

There were any number of responses he might have given to that, several of which would have made even Face Loran blush, but he settled for, “Didn’t seem fair, with all the testing that needs to be done.” 

 

“How noble.” She flicked a switch, and the data processor beside him whirred into life, shootingout readout after readout from a slot in its base. “You wouldn’t mind passing those across, would you?”

 

He handed her the sheaf of flimsy. “These all yours?” 

 

She nodded, stifling a yawn. “I started early.” Her eyes flicked rapidly across the rows of information and swore softly. “Damn it. Nothing.” She tossed the stack onto the countertop and made a face. 

 

“What were these?” He pulled the top sheet towards him and began to read. “Our samples?” 

 

“No, yours are over there.” She nodded at the stack in the corner. “These are from Tatooine. I haven’t got through them all yet, this is the third batch, two still to test.”

 

“The ones General Antilles brought back?” He looked over the list of results and raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t exactly call these ‘nothing,’ you know.” In front of him was an impressive list of recreational drugs, most of which were banned on every world he could think of. Trading in even one was enough to earn a ship’s captain a hefty fine and potentially a spell in prison under Republic law.

 

Kyah made an impatient-sounding noise. “You know what I mean.”

 

“I…don’t think I do, actually.”

 

She sighed. “All of this stuff - it’s what you’d expect to find in a place like Mos Eisely. None of it explains anything.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m looking for. But I know none of this is it. Does that even make sense?” She smiled ruefully at him. As before, she looked him full in the face, neither focusing on nor deliberately averting her eyes from the prosthetic side of his face.

 

“It does.” 

 

“I need a caf.” She raised a hand to cover another, longer yawn. “The last batch is still processing, and it’s not a short reaction cycle.” 

 

“Come on,” he found himself saying. “I’ll get you one. I never did get you that drink I promised,” he added quickly. 

 

She glared at him in mock-outrage. “Caf’s not a _drink,_ Dr Phanan. I refuse.”

 

He grinned. “All right. The drink’s still owed. But I’ll get you the caf anyway. I need one too before I trust myself with the spectrometer.” 

 

The sound of her laughter warmed him in a way that was both unfamiliar and strangely heady. “Fair enough.” She shrugged off her heavy protective shift and stretched luxuriantly. She was wearing a close-fitting cadet’s undershirt below it that left her arms exposed; there was a long, jagged scar on her right shoulder. Phanan realised he was staring, and hastily made himself look away. “Lead the way,” she said.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

From the air, it looked almost absurdly inconsequential - a handful of long, low buildings arranged in two roughly triangular wings within a low-walled compound, perched atop a cliff that sloped gently upwards from the rough ground for almost the length of a star destroyer before cresting to its summit. The concentric rings of armaments that glowed so starkly red on the Falcon’s scanner screens were barely visible to the naked eye among the mottled, vegetation-flecked rocks that littered the slope, buried as deep as possible without rendering them non-functional and matted out to prevent sunlight catching the metal. 

 

“Any new window dressing?” Tycho asked. The fighters’ scanners were all sweeping the area too, but the _Falcon_ ’s were more precise. 

 

“Not that I can see,” Solo responded. They had seen plans of the fortress well before departing for the system, but knew better than to expect that no added defences would have been put into place to meet them. It was likely, he reflected, that there were simply not enough crew to man any extra guns. “We’re almost in range. Let’s keep to the brief. On my signal, move out.” 

 

Below and behind, the X-wings of Rogue Squadron were in tight formation, flying as close as possible without clashing shields. Curving away from them on either side were the fighters of Nova and Polearm, the slower and heavier B-wings already firing their thrusters in readiness. 

 

“Dorset, Nova. You’re up.”

 

A chorus of affirmatives crackled through the link, and the squadron pulled ahead, fanning out and opening fire. Almost immediately, one of the lines on the scanner faded away; the first shield generator had been hit. 

 

In response, flame and blaster bolts belched abruptly from a hundred ports in the bare rock as the ground defences came to life. Suddenly the air was full of smoke and jets of light, and three of the B-wings swerved as they dropped torpedoes into the chaos below. More lines on the _Falcon_ ’s screen flickered and died; the interference was terrific, though, and static noise made the screen flash and blink. 

 

“Dorset?” he called. He could see her ship, out in front, her gunner picking off ground targets with dizzying rapidity. 

 

“We’re in,” she yelled, triumph and exhilaration ringing in her voice. “Primary repulsor shields breached. Too easy! Too goddamn easy!” 

 

“Todra, take your wings in. We’re right behind you.”

 

“Yes sir!” 

 

The A-wings hurtled forward. At full throttle, they were flying much too fast to accurately target anything on the ground, but he hadn’t asked them for accuracy. They were simply strafing, easily outpacing the tracking anti-aircraft guns and hitting whatever was there to hit, drawing the fire away from the deadlier but slower-moving B-wings, able to move freely now that the bombed-out main shields no longer slowed their progress. Within seconds they had reached the furthest edge of the compound and immediately doubled back, swooping around and inwards, soaring in and out of each other and the B-wings, still firing relentlessly in long concentrated bursts. Blasts from the ion cannons on the ground shot fruitlessly between them; the guns simply lacked the targeting capability to focus on the darting, weaving craft. Through it all the B-wings ploughed forward, lighting up the ground, blasting away at gun after gun, shield generator after shield generator. 

 

Solo guided the Falcon through the fray, ignoring everything except for the target blinking on the screen, growing steadily larger. X-wings surged ahead on either side, and over the din Tycho’s voice barked, “Lock S-foils to attack position! Stay tight, keep close! Save your fire!” 

 

“Any minute now,” Corran muttered, voicing Solo’s own thoughts. 

 

And then the main hangar was there; immense blast doors closed tight and impenetrable. They’d made directly for it, waiting for the waves of Imperial fighters to emerge as the Noval and Polearm squadrons swarmed around, keeping off the ground assault fire. The freighter and X-wings were far better suited to an aerial dogfight than the others were, but…

 

“What the hell is taking them so long?” Asyr Sey’lar asked in her soft Bothan growl. “Where are the fighter squadrons?” 

 

The doors of the hangar remained inert. There was no sign of motion; not even the cannon mounts at either side had activated, but remained lifeless, their hatches firmly shut. 

 

For a moment, no-one spoke. The comm silence stretched out, the little phalanx of ships hovering in absurd stillness as chaos continued to rage around them and on the ground. Three A-wings shot by, the last narrowly missing a stray bolt from an out-of-control cannon mount that sprayed fire in an erratic spiral before blowing itself off its own foundations. A nearby explosion briefly drowned out all other sound; a communications tower above the hangar had just collapsed in a cloud of smoke and rubble. Then: “There must be a fighter squadron. At least one. Since when do - ”

 

It was Aril Nunb’s voice, but she fell silent as the _Falcon_ ’s comm blared abruptly. 

 

Chewbacca growled. 

 

“Is that a transmission request?” Tycho’s voice was incredulous. 

 

“Yeah,” Solo said, staring at the flashing words on the screen.

 

“From the compound?”

 

“Yeah.” 

 

“Well, what are they saying?” 

 

Chewbacca grunted, then shook his shaggy head at Solo in disbelief. 

 

“Sorry, Chewbacca, not all of us are that fluent in Shyriwook,” Tycho said, apologetically. “Han? What are they saying?”

 

He re-read the message once more, even though it contained only three words, and he’d already read it thrice. As he did, he realised that the noise beyond was fading. The ground weapons that remained had stopped firing. 

 

“It’s a white flag call,” he said slowly. “They’re asking for a parley.” 


	17. Smokescreens - Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few moments, before things come to a head on Ororos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having trouble uploading the entire chapter, so I'm posting the first half now and I'll try to either edit it with the second half or just create Part IV to finish up the chapter and all the Ororos action. 
> 
> A note of special thanks to everyone who has left kudos and especially to those who have left comments, all of which have been lovely. I didn't expect many people to read this and I certainly wasn't writing with the expectation that anyone would *like* it. I have never written fiction for any kind of audience before and I don't have beta readers, so any and all feedback is a gift. If I ever do finish this it'll be completely down to the compliments and encouragement from everyone reading, so thank you all very, very much.

Smoke was still drifting across the blasted landscape when they landed; Corran’s X-wing touching down first, before Tycho and the _Falcon_ eased into position on the small patch of ground in front of the command centre. It was only just big enough to fit the three ships; the main landing platform was some distance away, on the far side of the cluster of buildings. A gentle breeze eddied across the lower slopes, but up on the plateau, in the openness, nothing stirred. 

 

In the air above, the fighters sat waiting - still, despite the evidence of their own scanners and Corran’s intuition, wary and watchful. Three had been hit, but not badly enough to have knocked them out of the sky. One B-wing rested between two others, held in place by clamps as the three astromechs worked together to repair a stabilizer under one vane. 

 

Chewbacca held his bowcaster cocked and ready in his enormous paws as he shambled down the _Falcon_ ’s ramp, pausing every now and then to scent the air.

 

Solo’s blaster remained holstered, but with each step he brushed his fingertips against it in quiet, almost ritualistic reassurance. The silence felt more ominous with every beat. 

 

Scanner in hand, Tycho moved across the landing with slow, careful steps, sweeping the ground, waiting for the warning blare that would reveal the presence of hidden mines, or any indication at all of active tech in the vicinity. But there was only the gentle hiss of static.

 

“Anything?” Solo asked as they drew level.

 

“Nothing. Those jammers up top are active, so I can’t get any readings beyond the doors, but the platform’s dead. Power’s out, no electrical signals.”

 

The command centre loomed in front of them, a small, windowless flat-topped pyramid of heavy grey rock, sealed by interlocking shield doors of solid durasteel. Under the overhang of the roof, a thick slablike layer of metal was just visible, perforated with narrow vents that allowed the scanner jammers within to do their work.

 

Standing in front of the closed doors was Corran, eyes closed, one arm slightly raised, deep furrows in his brow.

 

Chewbacca barked a question, and he looked around at them.

 

“Nothing,” he said, but he was still frowning. “And I mean, nothing. Nothing…and no-one.”

 

Wordlessly, Solo drew the commlink from his pocket and flicked a switch. 

 

The Imperial commandant’s clipped voice, full of fury and humiliation, spoke once more, repeating the words that had been transmitted to the _Falcon_ ’s bridge. 

 

“I am Captain Coulter. I speak for the garrison…those of us who remain. Our defences are destroyed, and our fuel reserves all but exhausted. I…I wish to invoke Article 17-44 of the Imperial Code and issue a declaration of conditional surrender. In return, the New Republic, under your own rules of engagement, is obliged to accord us Prisoner of War status, and medical treatment for our wounded. We have only enough power for one transmission. I repeat, we - ” The recording began to crackle with static, and the words cut out into abrupt silence. 

 

Corran was shaking his head. “If they were in there, I’d sense them. I can’t. Which means they’re _not_ in there,” he said emphatically.

 

Chewbacca waved a huge arm at the outbuildings and growled interrogatively. 

 

“No,” Corran said. “Not a chance.”

 

“We scanned every building three times over,” Tycho said quietly. “Aja and Yadira are still monitoring. There’s nothing alive in any of them. No life forms, no live generators - only emergency power active. No jammers, or the scanners wouldn’t have been able to detect the power lines. You’re sure…” he stopped before finishing the sentence, darting Corran an apologetic look. 

“I’ve been wrong before,” Corran said. “I’ll admit that. But not like this. It’s not that I can’t see who they are, or how many - there’s no presence there at all. Or if they had ysalmiri in there - if they did, I’d know, I’d feel it. I’m telling you: I’m just not picking up any life forms in there. It feels empty. It _is_ empty.”

 

“So you’re saying this is a false surrender? Why?” Solo glanced across at the buildings beyond the command centre. N othing was moving. Every gun turret in sight had either been blown to pieces or was pointing, inert, at the ground. “Where’d the transmission come from? And what was the point of getting us down here?They’re not firing - and if they’d been able to blow us up with something the scanners couldn’t pick up from the air, they’d have done it as soon as we touched down. The doors aren’t even - ” 

 

A loud, scraping rumble cut off the end of his sentence. 

 

It was not the main shield doors, but a small side entrance that had been invisible until it opened: a doorway so narrow that two of them would not have been able to pass through it side-by-side.

 

Beyond, as far as they could see, was only darkness.

 

The four of them studied it mutely for a long, long moment.

 

“On a scale of one to ten,” Solo muttered finally, “With ten being the absolute dumbest thing we could do in this situation…”

 

“I give it an eight,” Corran said. “That’s not so bad.” He was already moving, flashing a grin over his shoulder at them. Tycho shook his head, sighed, and followed. 

 

Chewbacca let forth a short but vehement burst of speech, then broke into a shambling jog.

 

“Yeah,” Solo sighed, drawing his blaster and quickening his pace to catch up, “One of these days, I just might.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

In the empty break room, Phanan made them both caf, as Kyah, who had never been allowed in the room before, took in the surroundings with an expression on her face that he couldn’t quite interpret. She ran a hand over the back of a sofa - old and comfortable, but not an extravagance by any means - and sighed. 

 

“What’s that?” she asked suddenly, indicating the second dispenser on the wall. 

 

“Chocolate.” 

 

“Chocolate?” She laughed, as though he’d just said something completely absurd. “Chocolate’s solid. You can’t put it in a dispenser.”

 

He stared at her, wondering if she was being serious. 

 

“What? It is!”

 

“You’ve…never heard of hot chocolate?” 

 

It was her turn to stare. “Hot…chocolate?” 

 

“Yeah. It’s a drink. It’s - ” On impulse, he picked up another mug and placed it under the chocolate dispenser, then filled it halfway. “Here. Try it.”

 

She looked at the mug and then at him, an expression of utmost skepticism on her face. Then she raised it to her lips and took a small, cautious sip. 

 

Her eyes widened. 

 

“It _is_ chocolate! It tastes just like it. Well, a little different.” She took another sip. “I think I like it.” 

 

He couldn’t help smiling. “Good.” Still not quite able to believe it, he said, “You’d seriously never heard of hot chocolate before right now?”

 

“No.” She studied the mug in her hands as though examining a museum artefact. “It’s a little sweet, isn’t it? I think I might prefer caf for right now.” 

 

He handed over the first mug he’d filled for her. “You wanted it black, right?” 

 

She nodded. “Thank you.”

 

His eyes wandered of their own accord to the jewel in her nose, to the heavy sweep of her long lashes as she closed her eyes for a moment, savouring the strong, hot brew. “This is good,” she said, a little dreamily. 

 

“You’re not tired?” he asked, a little awkwardly. “You don’t have to keep working on the samples. I mean, you’re allowed to work regular hours now. You don’t have to put in overtime.” 

 

Kyah smiled at him over the rim of the mug. “I know. But I want to keep going. It’s different now - doing it because I want to, not because I have to. You know?”

 

“I think I do.” Then he remembered something. “How did that come about anyway? Seldes didn’t tell us. Your meeting Karrde, I mean. Somehow I doubt your paths crossed in the medcentre.”

 

She studied him for a moment, as though she were considering how much she should reveal. 

 

“If it’s classified, I mean - ”

 

“Not exactly.” She seemed to have made up her mind. “Come on,” she said, with a slightly mischievous smile. “I can show you.”

 

She told him as they made their way from the break room to little-used corridor beyond the medcentre: about finding Talon Karrde’s dangerous pets, about their escape. Even forewarned, the sight of the huge animals in their enclosure was a startling one: he had never seen anything quite like them before, huge sleek black predators that looked far more suited to some exotic jungle than the confines of a military base. The vornskrs had clearly sensed them long before they saw them - or they had sensed Kyah, in any case. Phanan might as well not have been there for all the attention they paid him. They flung themselves at the bars, uttering strange cackling, hissing purrs of obvious delight.

 

“That’s how it happened,” she finished, laughing as the larger of the pair - Drang - arched his head at an almost impossible angle so that she could scratch behind his right ear. Phanan took the mug from her so she could devote the same attention to the other one, Sturm, who was whining plaintively at being left out. 

 

“That’s Talon Karrde for you.” He smiled; her pleasure at being with the vornskrs was contagious. They might have been tiny fluffy kittens. “You actually worked with vornskrs before? Where?” 

 

“Institute of Xenobiology and Biomedical Research,” she said. “On Sanbra. That was where I started researching venoms and blood antigens - not officially, but if you were just a lowly medical analyst in the Imperial Research Consortium, if you stayed late and got creative with your time cards, and made sure to get your assigned work done, they didn’t pay so much attention to anything you got up to on the side.” She smiled, a little pensively. “I built up three years worth of research without anyone so much as blinking an eye.” 

 

“That’s dedication,” he remarked lightly. “To choose that tradeoff.”

 

She turned, frowning. 

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Well…” He’d spoken without really thinking, and now she was looking at him with a mixture of wariness and confusion. “I mean…they wouldn’t have let you work for the Institute without formally swearing allegiance to the Empire, would they? I know the facility is lightyears ahead of anywhere else, I know you’d never have been able to find those resources anywhere else, but still - ” 

 

He stopped, suddenly uneasy. Her expression had changed completely; now she looked as though she were holding an intense rush of emotion in check through sheer effort of will. 

 

“You know, do you?” Her voice shook a little. “I see. You think I chose allegiance to the Empire so that I could take advantage of the Institute facilities for my personal research. Tell me something, Ton Phanan, where do you come from? How did you get to be a doctor?”

 

“I’m from Rudrig,” he said, taken aback at the vehemence of her tone. “My parents put me through medical school. I joined the Alliance after practicing there for a while.”

 

She nodded slowly. “Rudrig. I know it - only from looking at records, though. I’ve never been. It looks lovely. I imagine it was nice, growing up there. Living there.” 

 

“It - ”

 

“I don’t know where I’m from. It’s hard to narrow it down, there were so many worlds where Imperial purges were happening at the time. And there was no-one left for me to ask, afterwards. Only a handful of us survived, and all the others were younger than me.” The words rushed out, inexorable as falling hail. “I was around six or seven. They took us to an Imperial facility. An orphanage and re-education facility in the Outer Rim. That’s where they took all the kids who survived.”

 

He opened his mouth to say something, but no words came.

 

“You haven’t heard of them? Of course not. Why would you have?” He flinched at the harsh bitterness in her voice. “There were hundreds of them. Possibly there still are. What do you do with thousands of child survivors once you’ve slaughtered their families and razed their homes to the ground? Kill them too? Not that they didn’t do their share of that, I never saw a stormtrooper balk at killing children.” 

 

The implications of the words took a second to fully register, and when they did Phanan felt slightly sick. 

 

“But it must have seemed so wasteful: all that ready manpower, young enough to train, impressionable enough to be convinced of where their true loyalties should lie. They told us all, over and over again, that our families were traitors. That we had been rescued. That the Empire had saved us, and freed our minds. Children want to believe, they want to belong. And they made sure that appropriate gratitude was rewarded when we got older.” Her big dark eyes were vivid with anger, grief, and unbearable pain. “You said the right things, or you paid the price. Tragic accidents happen. Or workers are needed in a place where getting communications out isn’t easy, so they tell you you may not hear from your friends for a while…” Her voice broke.

 

Drang pushed harder against the bars, trying to get closer to her; Sturm looked at Phanan and raised his lip in a silent snarl, clearly blaming him for their friend’s distress. 

 

“I knew what I had to do. I did what I could. I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have your choices.” She raised a hand, brushing away the moisture on her cheek with a quick, angry swipe. Out of nowhere, he thought of Face Loran, and the burden of guilt he carried that he had confided to only a few people in the world. 

 

Drang hissed at him and despite the protection of the barrier he took an involuntary step back, almost spilling caf on himself. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he managed finally, aware of how pathetically inadequate it sounded. “I didn’t - I’m sorry.” 

Kyah turned, looking him full in the face. She was back in command of herself; there were no more tears. After a moment, she dropped her eyes to Drang, who whickered affectionately. “Of course you are,” she said, flatly. 

 

Then, unexpectedly: “Your parents…are they…” 

 

“They’re dead,” Phanan said. “They had me late in life. They both died before I graduated medical school.”

 

She didn’t respond, but kept her eyes on the vornskrs, who were still making vigorous attempts to break down the bars separating them from her. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “For saying that to you. I shouldn’t have.” 

 

“No,” she agreed. “You shouldn’t.” A brief, slightly forced smile crossed her face. “Don’t do it again.”

 

“I promise.” 

 

“We should get back,” she said abruptly. “The last test cycle will have finished running by now.”

 

Without waiting for a response, she gave each vornskr a final scratch behind the ears and straightened up, then turned and began to walk away towards the medcentre. Avoiding the hostile glare of the two animals, he followed, still clutching a mug in each hand and holding on to the fact that she had, at least, definitely said, “we.”

 

He hadn’t blown it completely. 

 

_Or at least_ , he amended to himself a little ruefully, _not yet_. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Alone in the training room, Mara had lost track of the time. 

 

Methodically, unhurriedly, she moved from station to station, from katas to target practice to unarmed combat training with padded dummies, losing herself in it, relishing the sting of sweat and the familiar, welcome ache in her muscles from the exertion of a proper workout. 

 

Finally, she ignited her saber, and called out the remotes.

 

There was something vaguely unsatisfying about working with the remotes. They were a decent enough challenge, especially with many in the air at once, but it wasn’t sparring, it wasn’t combat. A test of reflexes, not of skill, really. Even sparring with Corran would have been better, in truth. Corran liked to talk, and a talkative Corran was invariably an annoying Corran, but even that could be regarded as merely an extra challenge, just another distraction tactic to tune out. 

 

_Some distractions aren’t so easy to ignore._

 

She’d stopped wondering why she couldn’t shake the memory. Every time it flashed across her mind she saw and felt some new detail. The ghost scar still visible on his upper lip - _from what, why didn’t he get rid of it, he could, surely, if he wanted to_ \- the white tracery of Force lightning marks just visible at his shoulder, which neither of them would ever be able to rid themselves of. The place where his undershirt had been torn and sewn back up with grey thread instead of black. The corrugated floor mats, pitted with scorch marks from deflected remote fire. Her own holster digging into her hip after he’d managed to flip them both, and ended up on top of her. 

 

Mundane details were good. Better to focus on mismatched thread and blast damage than…the alternatives. 

 

_A fine solution_ , she heard in the back of her mind. _Look everywhere but at what you want to look. That will surely solve everything._

 

With an inarticulate growl of frustration, she stabbed to the left - a little too hard. The incoming remote fell apart, split almost perfectly in twain. The two halves clanked sadly to the ground in quick succession, smoking gently. 

 

She felt the tiredness then, really felt it, and knew it was more than just overtaxed muscles.

 

_Enough. For now._

 

Her blade retracted, and she lowered it, then waved off the remotes and sent them flying back to their corners. Tired as she was, her mind refused to settle. 

 

_Focus into it._ Skywalker’s voice floated back up to her. _Find the source._

 

Reflexively, she shook her head, as though that would dislodge the nagging mind-irritant as well as the thought that had come to her as soon as he’d said it, and that she’d banished instantly. _I don’t need to. I know._

 

No. She wasn’t going to think about that, she reminded herself. Or him.

 

The _Fire_. She made herself focus completely on her ship, doing a mental inventory of every bolt and rivet, visualising every last detail of it. Picturing which repairs must have been completed, what might be left. If it were little enough, there might be time to take her out for a short test run, nothing too ambitious, just a brief skim over the open ocean…

 

Her thoughts slipped into comforting, reassuring patterns, and she stepped into the fresher stall feeling almost at peace. 

 

Her hair was still damp half an hour later, as she made her way down Blackmoon’s wide corridors; she hadn’t braided it after her shower, and she was still idly working tangles out of the ends when she walked into the hangar. 

 

And stopped in her tracks.

 

She’d expected it to be empty - it was, after all, the middle of the night - but it wasn’t.

 

One of the women was familiar: the Twi’lek, the Rogues’ chief mechanic, Koyi Komad, looking angrier than Mara could remember seeing her. After a moment she remembered who the other was - the deck officer, Ventress, who had been overseeing the ground crew when the _Fire_ had first arrived. She, too, looked furious, but they were not, Mara knew immediately, angry at each other. They seemed to be conferring - waves of urgency emanated from them, anger darkened with vague underpinnings of…remorse? Dread?

 

She moved closer. They were right in front of her ship.

 

Much of the damage had been skilfully repaired; the missing panelling had been restored everywhere except for a small section, where the new transceiver array had just been fitted, so recently that many of the connectors still needed to be put in place. New unpainted patches gleamed in places that had been previously scorched and pocked with blast marks. 

 

She took another step, and the nose came fully into view. They had been standing between it and her.

 

They saw her then, both at once, and looked both shocked and a little fearful. Both began speaking at once, rapidly and urgently, but she was only barely aware of what they were saying as she took in what she was seeing. Their voices seemed to be coming her from somewhere very, very far away, through a barely-functional speaker. 

 

The painted scrollwork she loved so much, the intricate design of flickering flame she’d personally supervised as it had been put in place, had survived the attack, but was now almost invisible under a rash of scorch marks. _Blaster burn_ , she thought mechanically. _Recent_.  _Almost point-blank range._ Not many shots had been fired, no more than a clip or two haphazardly emptied directly into the panelling in a rough circle, forming a frame for the words that had been scrawled there in large straggling letters, rendered in what Mara thought she recognised as red gloss paint, because it gleamed wetly though it must in fact have been dry. It was Aurebesh, and it was a single word.

 

_Whore._

 

She stared at it until her vision began to blur slightly at the edges. 

 

Then, as though someone had flipped a switch, the voices of the women beside her snapped back into full volume.

 

“…cannot apologise enough, Captain Jade. We do not know who was responsible, but I will accept culpability - ”

 

“I have already ordered a full investigation, my lady. I will complete the repair work myself. I - ”

 

She held up a hand, and they fell silent. Staring at her apprehensively, with that all-too-familiar undercurrent of fear. 

 

Words were expected of her, she knew. She had none. 

 

In the silence, the _bleep_ of her commlink was startlingly, shockingly loud. She activated it without saying anything, and Wedge Antilles spoke. “Mara? There’s been a development on Ororos. We need you in the briefing room, as soon as you can.”

 

The two women were silent, but she caught Koyi Komad’s eye: the fear had fallen away, replaced with something that might have been pity and might have been empathy.

 

The words sounded stiff and foreign, emerging in a voice barely recognisable as her own. “It wasn’t your fault. You’re not to blame.”

 

It was all she could manage. 

 

Then, she turned on her heel and walked away, leaving them there with the message that had been left for her, there in the base that was one of the beating hearts of the New Republic. 

 


	18. Precipice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Han Solo, on the brink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been unforgivably long since I updated this. I can only apologize and blame work for keeping me busy as well as keeping my writer's block alive and well. I'm posting this short chapter now and the next one will be up before the end of the month. It is enormous, and picks up Luke & Mara's plotlines as well as introducing Leia, so as soon as it's had a last edit and spellcheck it'll be up too. Thank you for sticking with this, if you still are!

The light came on as soon as Han Solo’s boot touched the floor. In the next instant his blaster was up and cocked, but nothing else happened.

 

It was a single light, white and harsh, set high up on the vaulted ceiling. Beside it, a red warning beacon flickered for an instant and then died. 

 

Chewbacca was close behind. Tilting his shaggy head to one side, he considered a minute. _It has not been long._

 

“How do you figure?”

 

_I can still smell them._

 

“What was that?” Tycho was the last one through the door. The scanner in his hand still emitted only soft static.

 

“Someone’s been here.” Corran’s voice floated down from a gantry overhead that none of them had seen him climb to. The tips of his fingers traced lines across the panelled wall. “Recently.”

 

“What’s recent? Minutes? Seconds?”

 

Without warning, the far wall beamed into sudden, blazing life - revealing itself to be a comm screen, extending almost all the way from floor to ceiling. A lone human in an Imperial commandant’s uniform looked out at them, his image wavering and flickering slightly at the edges. At his back were riveted metal panels, grey and cold.

 

“General Solo.” 

 

It was the same clipped voice that had spoken over the _Falcon’_ s comm. A ragged cut above the man’s right eyebrow had been bandaged, but not well; blood had already begun to seep through and trickle down his cheek. 

 

“You’re Coulter?” 

 

“You received our transmission.” 

 

“That’s why we’re here.” Solo did not lower his blaster. “To accept your surrender. And get your wounded to my flagship. Where are you?”

 

The commandant smiled. He had very pale eyes that glittered maniacally in the dim light, and there was something slightly unnatural about the expression on his broad, blanched face. Out of the corner of his eye Solo noticed that Corran was frowning - not at the screen, but at the closed door beside it. 

 

“I commend you,” Coulter said, and his smile widened into a strange, twisted grin. “You kept your word.”

 

“You sound surprised.”

 

The commandant seemed not to have heard him. “You kept your word,” he repeated. 

 

Abruptly he began to laugh, a bizarre, snorting giggle that bounced and echoed around the room and did not stop after a moment, or even several. On and on it went, and they stared from the screen to each other, at a loss.

 

“What the hell?” Tycho muttered. 

 

_This sounds like madness,_ Chewbacca rumbled uneasily. _I do not like it._

 

Coulter stopped laughing. His eerie grin remained, even more unnatural-looking than before. “Was it honour?” He tilted his head to one side in an oddly birdlike gesture for a slab-shouldered Imperial officer. “It must have been. It has long been said of you, General, that you are a man of honour. You would not leave men to die, even enemies.” 

 

Again the high discordant laugh rang out, shriller and more maniacal than before, and Chewbacca snarled his distress, raising his bowcaster high. 

 

Tycho was by Solo’s side now, wary and tense, his own blaster cocked. “I don’t like this.”

 

“What’s wrong with him?” Solo murmured.

 

“I don’t know. But - ” 

 

“Honourable fool.” Coulter’s voice had changed. There was a hint of triumph in it now, but his staring eyes remained glassily manic. “Such a fool. You think you have won, don’t you, General?”

 

“I accepted surrender,” Solo said loudly. “The surrender _you_ offered, you - ”

 

Once again Coulter ignored him. “You do not realize what you have done. But you will. Oh yes.” The trickle of blood had reached his chin; a drop fell to his tunic, leaving a scarlet streak on the stiff grey fabric. If he noticed it, he gave no sign. The pupils in his blue eyes were massively dilated, and though he was speaking directly to Solo, his gaze was unfocused, and it ocurred to Solo that the man might not actually be able to see him. 

 

“We knew we were outgunned. There were too few of the faithful left. There is only one victory left to us, and we claim it now. You have delivered yourself into our hands. It was almost too easy.” Once more his laughter broke out, rising to a completely unhinged cackle, and this time Solo knew that Chewbacca was right - the man was not sane. “You brought your ship here. It will never leave this place - and nor will you, General Solo.” He spit the last words out like a malediction. 

 

“I don’t know what you think you’re talking about, but - ”

 

“You might have wondered, why was no-one was there to meet your ship? Where are the men we surrendered for, so desperately in need of medical assistance that we would betray our cause to save them?” Coulter had begun to sway slightly; sweat was beading visibly on his broad white brow. “There are none. The last of the faithful are here, with me, in a munitions room far beyond your reach. The fortress is thick with explosives, yes - every room, including the one you have defiled with the mark of your filthy traitor’s boots. In moments, I will detonate them all. We cannot survive, no - but in death we will see you dead too. I hope you enjoy the final three minutes of your wretched existence, smuggler.” 

 

Before any of them could speak he raised a small remote, flicked the trigger on it with a bandaged thumb. His hand was shaking so violently that the movement nearly jerked it from his grasp. “It is done. Our final act of service, the execution of Han Solo, upjumped pirate filth, a last, glorious, victorious strike for Empire!” 

 

“You - ”

 

“Live long in whatever hell the fates see fit to send you.” Coulter bared white teeth in a last snarling rictus of a grin; blood was flowing more freely down the side of his face now, and he no longer looked entirely human. “General Solo.”

 

The screen went black.

 

“ _Wait!_ ”

 

Solo lunged forward, but where the screen had been was just a blank bare wall once more. “Tycho!” he bellowed, fumbling, searching for a call switch that would reveal hidden controls, or a moving panel…

 

But Tycho had his own commlink out, and was speaking urgently to Yadira Noor at the other end. “Check again. Anything that’s live, anything that could trigger charges, even if it just looks like signal noise, _anything_! It’s going to be a remote detonation, there has to be a signal!” 

 

Yadira’s response was vehement, but her words were drowned out by Chewbacca’s anguished roaring. 

 

_Three minutes! We must get back to the ships! We have no time!_

 

“Ship. Not “ships.” Ship.’”

 

They started, all three, for Corran, high up on the platform moments before, was now at Solo’s shoulder. On his face was an expression of neither concern nor agitation, only a faintly puzzled frown, as though he was trying to remember something that had momentarily slipped his mind.

 

“We’ve got two minutes, Corran, no riddles!” 

 

“Han, listen to me.” The faraway expression dropped away; his green eyes were alert and urgent. “He said ship, _ship_ , not ships, did you hear?” His head darted back and forth, looking at the walls and, Solo suspected, straight through them as well. “One ship. The _Falcon_. He expected you, only you, not us. He was talking at you, he wasn’t talking to you. He couldn’t see you, he couldn’t see us, not me, not Tycho, not Chewbacca. He didn’t know we were here with you. He’d have mentioned it. Not to brag, but taking out a war hero and a Jedi is at least as much of a prize as killing you.” 

 

“Point taken, but - ” 

 

“I told you before. There’s no-one alive in this whole place. He’s not here. No-one’s here but us. This - ” he gestured at the wall on which the screen had appeared, “ - isn’t a comm channel, it’s a viewscreen. That wasn’t a communication, Han, it was a recording, I’d wager my life on it.” 

 

“So he distracted us with a recording, and we fell for it, but the charges must be real, why lie about them?” Tycho demanded. “Are you saying there aren’t any? What was the point of that whole performance, then?” 

 

“No, the charges are real, I can see them. But…” he whipped around. “They aren’t on a remote detonator, that’s why Aja and Yadira aren’t picking up any signals…” 

 

He broke into a run. “They’re timed. The timer’s here, somewhere here, it’s on a pressure sensor, triggered when we came through the door…” 

 

The blade of his saber blazed into life; he slashed at a floor panel in the entryway, cutting it free, and kicked it away. A moment later Tycho had dropped to his knees beside him, scanner in hand. 

 

“I see it,” he said suddenly. “There.” He pointed to a dense knot of wires, crouching like a malignant electronic tumour at the corner of the recess beneath where the panel had been. He was already fumbling in the pockets of his flight jacket. “I can probably deactivate - ”

 

He recoiled, only just in time, flinging himself backwards and away from the sudden explosion of sparks and smoke. Solo had taken aim and fired almost in the same breath, sending half a dozen bolts directly into the heart of the cluster. 

 

“ - or you could take the direct approach,” he finished.

 

Corran’s hand hovered over what was left of the mechanism; he flexed his fingers and it flew apart, charred wires whipping out and uncoiling, scattering blackened circuits in all directions. “I think that did it.”

 

“You’re sure?” Solo glanced rapidly, uncertainly around the room. 

 

Nothing stirred. 

 

“It’s been more than three minutes.”

 

For a moment none of them spoke. Then Solo lowered his blaster and let out a long, slightly shaky breath that he hadn’t realised he had been holding. 

 

“All right,” he said. Then: “No, Chewie, we’re not going yet.”

 

The Wookiee, already halfway out the door, groaned a protest and shuffled unhappily back inside.

 

“What now?” Tycho asked, quietly. 

 

He thrust his blaster back into its holster. “Get everyone down here. Everyone with a functioning fighter.”

 

Chewbacca barked incredulously.

 

“It’s safe,” Corran said. “The main landing platform, at the back. Just tell them to keep clear of the signal tower. It’s been hit, and it isn’t stable. Could come down without warning.” 

 

“If they wanted to kill me, they could have just blown up the ops room the second I walked in,” Solo said. “Why didn’t they? Why set a timer, why act out that drama on the screen? Something’s up.” 

 

“He said the rest of the fortress is wired to blow too,” Tycho said. “That doesn’t make sense either. Imperials don’t do dramatic self-sacrifice. It doesn’t fit.”

 

“No. None of it fits. Why bring the rest of the buildings down, if I was the only target?”

 

“You think - ”

 

“I think this fortress is worth more to them as rubble and dust. I want to know why. I want it searched. I think there’s something in here they wanted buried. We’re turning it inside out. Corran, I need your eyes. Any other timers or pressure sensors, we need to shut them down now. We - ” 

 

He stopped short. Corran’s gaze had returned to the door beyond the screen wall, and there was something in his expression that had not been there before, something that made the hair on the back of Solo’s neck stand up. 

 

“What is it?” he demanded. 

 

“I don’t know,” Corran sounded uncharacteristically evasive. “It’s not explosives, it’s not Imperials. It’s not an ambush. There’s no danger warning. It just feels…ominous.”

 

“Ominous?”

 

Chewbacca barked, impatient and alarmed. _What do you see?_

 

Corran swallowed hard. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “It’s not clear. But…it feels like death.” 

 


	19. Charnel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grim discoveries, puzzle pieces falling into place - and enter Councillor Organa-Solo.  
> TW/CW: Graphic descriptions of violence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to stop promising/predicting when this thing will be updated because I always seem to fail at meeting even self-imposed deadlines. Apologies. Nevertheless I *will* keep going with it until it's done, even if by then no-one cares about it anymore but me!
> 
> Thanks, as always, to people leaving kudos and comments. It means a lot.

_In this decayed hole among the mountains_

_In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing_

_Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel_

_There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home._

_It has no windows, and the door swings,_

_Dry bones can harm no one._

-T.S. Eliot, _The Waste Land_

 

The medcentre was completely empty on their return; even the cleaner droids had departed for the night. Kyah, red-eyed and silent, went straight to her workstation where a fresh stack of readouts sat next to the softly beeping data processor. A glowing green light on its console indicated it had completed its latest cycle. 

 

Phanan hung awkwardly back, wondering what to do. Of one thing he was certain: the safest thing would be to leave her alone. He could, he reflected, just go to bed. Iella Wessiri had given him an out. 

 

For a moment a vision of his bunk, warm and inviting, rose up before his eyes. In the next instant the light caught the jewel in Kyah’s nostril, making it glitter, drawing his gaze to her profile outlined against the processor’s arc-lamp, and he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. 

 

On impulse, he slid into the bench directly opposite hers, doing his best to look nonchalant. She looked up from the printouts and it seemed to him that she might protest, but she didn’t. She studied him for a moment over the edge of the flimsy sheet with her beautiful, inscrutable dark eyes, then wordlessly resumed her reading. 

 

Trying to keep his relief from being too obvious, he busied himself with setting up his own equipment, willing himself to concentrate. His prosthetic hand did not need a glove; he lowered it into the sterilizer, wincing slightly at the familiar sting of the solvents at the point where skin met metal.

 

“I always think I’ll get used to this,” he ventured, hoping he sounded offhand. “I never do.”

 

The low whirr of the hand’s circuitry, shaking off the last droplets of solvent as he withdrew it, was much too loud in the ensuing silence. _Just shut up and work, idiot,_ said an exasperated voice in his head that sounded remarkably like Face Loran’s. 

 

Her hair was coming loose from its fastenings; a corkscrew-shaped curl fell to her exposed clavicle and the tray of samples he’d been reaching for nearly slipped from his fingers. He recovered it only just in time, swearing under his breath as the vials rattled precariously in their slots. 

 

“I’m not usually this bad at this.” He cringed at the lameness of it before the words had even fully left his mouth, and had to suppress the urge to bang his head against the metal worktop. _Smooth, Dr. Phanan._ _Real smooth. Set something on fire next, that’ll really impress her._

 

“I thought I’d run these a bit differently,” he said, in as professional a tone as he could muster. “They’re the ones my team collected on Kuat. I think I know what they are, so I figure I can bypass the inital cluster analysis and go right to the ion chromatograph with a points reference; there’s a chance it won’t work, but if it does, it’ll save a lot of time.”

 

There was no answer from across the room. Phanan grimaced.

 

“I know it’s not protocol,” he ploughed on. “But I think it’ll be worth the risk.”

 

Silence.

 

“I’m guessing you don’t approve.” He’d intended it to sound light and wry, but it came out several octaves too high.

 

Again, there was no response.

 

He couldn’t take the silence any more. Steeling himself, he blurted, “Look…I’m sorry. I really am. I was an idiot. I - ” 

 

He stopped. She was not listening to him. She no longer seemed aware of his presence at all. The processor let out a piercing whistle - a warning to clear its intake tray - but she didn’t seem to hear that either, despite the fact that it was right at her elbow.

 

“Kyah?” 

 

It was a risk, using her name, but it was clear it hadn’t registered. Nothing else seemed to exist except the sheet of flimsy in her hand, which he noticed she was clutching so hard that she’d torn it.

 

“Kyah, what is it?”

 

She started, seeming to have only just realized he was there, and dropped the sheet as though it had spontaneously caught alight. 

 

“You found something?” he prompted.

 

“I - yes.”

 

He took the readout. It was a single reading, a series of unfamiliar chemical peaks in a pattern that appeared entirely random. “I’ve never seen this before. It looks a little like Thapifan, but the isotopes are wrong - ”

 

“It’s not Thapifan.” 

 

“So what is it?”

 

“It doesn’t have a name.”

 

“How do you know what it is, then?”

 

She took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking so badly that she had to grip the worktop to steady them, and her face was the same as it had been at the vornskr pen, vivid with emotions building like floodwater against a dam that was about to break.“Because - I created it.” 

 

“You - what? On Sanbra?”

 

“It’s an anaesthetic,” she said. “The base of one, anyway - it’s unusuable in this form, too concentrated; it needs a stabilizing reagent to work properly. It’s not stable, or safe, like this.” 

 

She hadn’t actually answered the question, but Phanan decided it was best not to push. “General Antilles found it on Tatooine - how would it have gotten there? Was it on the open market?” 

 

“I never got anywhere close to getting it market ready. But I haven’t even seen it in years.”

 

“When was the last time you worked on it?”

 

She hesitated. He did not know if it was because she did not trust him, or because of something else entirely. 

 

Then, with obvious reluctance: “Ten, maybe eleven years. Before I was sent to Obroa-skai.”

 

He knew, then, or thought he did, but before either of them could say another word his commlink beeped. Impatiently he reached for the kill switch, but then he saw the channel and hastily activated it instead.

 

The message was short and to-the-point. 

 

He looked up at Kyah’s apprehensive face. “It’s General Antilles. He wants all mission crew in the briefing room, something’s happened.” 

 

“I see,” she said, quietly. 

 

Phanan made the decision almost without thought, filled with a certainty that he very rarely felt. “Not yet, but you will. Come with me?”

 

He wanted to reach out, to touch her hand, to make her understand that he was not leading her to a trial, but he did not dare. Apart from anything else, he was certain she would not want him to touch her. Even if the conversation in front of the vornskr pen had never happened. He had grown used to women shrinking from the touch of his artificial hand, repelled by the unnatural coldness and the strangeness of synthflesh, which felt just enough like real skin to be unsettling. 

 

She studied him for a long moment. For the first time, he noticed the faint scar at her temple, just visible from where her right eyebrow tapered to a point.

 

“I think you should be there,” he said, because he did. 

 

He would not, he knew, have been able to put together a more convincing or rational argument to persuade her, but there was no need. She still looked both afraid and strangely haunted, but she nodded.

 

“I’ll come.” 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

After, when it was all over, Kyah would not remember getting to the briefing room. She would have to be reminded where the hidden access panel on the wall was, and how to place her hand on it for clearance. Ton Phanan was with her, and if he said anything to her on the way she did not remember that either, but last thing that registered in her mind before the hidden door hissed open was his face with its single bright blue eye, no longer sardonic but looking at her as though he very much wanted to be confidently reassuring but did not know how.

 

Inside, Phanan was intercepted by a pilot who would have looked more like someone cast to play a Republic hero in a holodrama than an actual Republic hero, were it not for the deep livid scar cutting starkly across his face. He seemed to be vastly amused by something, but Phanan spoke a few urgent words and his smirk went away. 

 

Moments later, they were facing the command dais and its occupant, a wiry dark-haired man with a Rogue Squadron crest and the most elaborate insignia of all. Beside him sat a woman who wore neither crest nor insignia, deftly braiding up her long red-gold hair.

 

Mara Jade’s lovely face was a mask; the thread of connection they’d had in the medcentre was undetectable now. If she was a touch paler under her dusting of freckles, and if her green eyes looked darker and more shadowed than before, perhaps that was merely a trick of the light. Unease curled in the pit of Kyah’s stomach, and she looked quickly away.

 

“General Antilles,” said the scarred pilot. “I think you’re going to want to hear this.”

 

Antilles looked inquiringly at Phanan. “You found something?”

 

“No, General. Well. Not me.” 

 

Many eyes followed his gaze to her. She was uncomfortably aware that she had the attention of every pilot within earshot, which was most of them.

 

“It’s not easy to explain,” she began. “I - I know you called an alert, I don’t know if there’s time to - ”

 

“There’s some,” Antilles said. “Do you know what’s happening on Ororos?”

 

“The strike team?”

 

“They’ve landed,” the scarred pilot said. 

 

Phanan stared at his friend. “ _Landed?”_

 

“Things took a turn,” Antilles said. “They’re searching the fortress. It was rigged to blow, Han thinks there’s something they’re trying to hide.” He motioned to the empty chairs in front of him. “Have a seat.” His own chair creaked as he leaned forward, studying her intently. “All right, Doctor. Tell me.”

 

Kyah realised she was still holding the readout and slid it across the table to him. “That was in one of the vials you found on Tatooine. You won’t find it in any database, but it’s an anaesthetic - well, sort of.”

 

“How do you know?”

 

It was no easier to say the second time. “I…invented it.”

 

“You used to work at the Imperial Research Consortium.”

 

For a long moment she could only look at him. It was a statement of fact, without censoriousness or distaste, but she felt a wild desire to scream loud and long. _You don’t know, you have no idea, you can’t know how it was…_

 

Instead she said, in a voice that wavered only a little: “I was a technician. And a medic, sometimes. But this wasn’t Imperial work. This was mine.”

 

A fierce sort of pride welled up in her then. It had been hers. It had cost her everything, and it had been taken from her, but it had been hers and she had been proud of it. It was perhaps the only thing she’d done in her life that she wasn’t ashamed of. 

 

“Many of us who worked the labs had…well, personal projects. They never paid much attention as long as we got our assigned work done and stayed discreet. Most techs tapped the recreational market, party favours, that sort of thing. I wanted to do something else.”

 

She hadn’t noticed it, but her voice had steadied. Ton Phanan was staring at her with a new expression, one that brought the smirk back to his friend’s scarred face, but she did not notice that either.

 

“Imperial medical research was focused on humans. Of course it did, who else mattered to them? I wanted to develop formulas that would work for others, that would work when bacta wouldn’t, and you wouldn’t have to be wealthy or live on a world that had trade relations with Thyferra to get. I had a few dozen going, and I was making progress, though I couldn’t test anything, I could only go on what I thought would work based on what I knew, and old records in the archives. And then - ” 

 

She faltered. She’d buried the memory deep, in a vain attempt to bury the grief and guilt and pain along with it, and now she had to bring it back again… 

 

“Then, what?” Antilles prompted, not ungently.

 

“Endor. Endor happened. And I - some of us - ”

 

An invisible hand was at her throat, choking off both speech and breath. She was no longer in the briefing room at Blackmoon Base, but manacled once again to the rack in the windowless coffinlike cell, slipping in and out of consciousness and the awareness of agony, of burning thirst, having to remind herself over and over that the wet trickles snaking across her scalp and wrists were not water but her own blood and sweat. 

 

_“I am offering you your life. I will not offer it again. You have not lost everything, not yet. But you will. Defy me, and I will see to it, you have my word.”His breath is hot on the side of her face, fingertips gripping, digging deliberately into the wound that splits open her immobilized head. The pain is white-hot, blinding. She screams, but her throat is a shrivelled ruin; only a strangled whine escapes. “You are not altogether a fool. You know you have no hope. If you tell them they will not believe you. And you will lose, my dear.” He nods, his expression a ghastly travesty of compassionate regret; do you see, Kyah, do you see what you have made me do? “You will lose. Everything.”_

 

The insignia on Antilles’ uniform pocket swam into view, with its curving points like incising daggers. The symbol of the Alliance. The Republic. 

 

_If you tell them, they will not believe you._

 

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. 

 

_You will lose. Everything._

 

“You were going to defect.” 

 

Mara Jade had spoken with the matter-of-factness of someone reporting the weather. 

 

Kyah stared at her, unable to speak. Blood was pounding in her head as the words sank in. _What - how?_

 

_How did she…how could she…_

 

“That’s right, isn’t it? Karrde saw your files.”

 

_My files_. Files that should not have existed. Files that listed who she had been, what she had done, the evidence of her treason against the Empire. They had been destroyed - he had ordered it done personally - taking with them all possibility of pleading her case to the Republic, of ever clearing her name. That was what he had told her… 

 

“Yes,” she whispered.

 

“It was the right time to try it. There wouldn’t have been many other chances.” 

 

Despite everything, Kyah could not help but think of how the others might have reacted to hearing the Emperor’s Hand calling their defection plans well-timed. _Former Emperor’s Hand_ , she amended to herself.

 

“Disruption in the ranks, overseers paying even less attention than usual, enough chaos for cover. That was the plan, wasn’t it? Except you got caught. Your records from Sanbra were erased, but not the copies stored in the Records Office on Galvani. I’m guessing whoever wiped your files didn’t know about those, or couldn’t access them.”

 

Kyah managed a nod. Her head was spinning. Nothing felt real.

 

“It’s a wonder you didn’t get a prison sentence,” said Antilles. “You were demoted, they sent you to Obroa-skai, but you didn’t serve time.”

 

“No.” Tears pricked the backs of her eyes, but she held them back. “It was…I had a supervisor.”

 

“A scientist?” 

 

“A monster. He was the one who - who found us out. Someone betrayed us, or we weren’t careful enough, I never found out which.” 

 

_The transport is an ugly, squat cargo ship, but she has never seen a craft so beautiful. Its name is etched in thick blunt letters on its prow, just visible in the lights of the open-roofed docking bay, and in that moment she would unhesitatingly swear to name her firstborn after it if she ever has one. Above is a whole ocean of stars. She has almost persuaded herself that she can see the red glow of Sullust among them. Even as they approach the gangplank she is craning her head back for one more, just one more last look at the promised land she has convinced herself she can already see, now that it is finally within their reach._

 

_When the world dissolves a heartbeat later into fire and screams, the pain does not hit immediately, despite the bolt crashing into her ribs that sends her sprawling to the ground, wrenching her hand from his. Acrid smoke is everywhere, filling the air with the stench of scorched flesh, stinging her eyes so that she can no longer read the letters even though they are right there, just there above her, and distorting everything else so that she can no longer tell which of the huddled heaps around her in the grey-brown dirt are the things that had been her friends. Ziad is the exception, perfectly visible beside her, staring up at the smoke-shrouded sky with sightless eyes while his tunic turns first red and then black from the life draining out of him._

 

“His name is Lumer. Elon Lumer. As dyed-in-the-wool an Imperial as they come. He worked off the books, same as all the other senior scientists.” It seemed vitally important to tell them everything, to tell it clearly and leave nothing out - and talking was a lifeline against the memories that threatened to drown her. “After Endor, the writing was on the wall. While he still had power and influence, and while there was still a bit of time, he bought himself a new identity and a position on Obroa-skai. Passed himself off as an independent scientist - he wasn’t the only one to do it. The last thing he did as his old self was to pull rank and have me sent to his new labs.” 

 

“Why?”

 

_The sickly-sweet medicinal odour that always clings to his robes envelops her as he leans in close, relishing her inability to shrink back and away, her ragged sobbing gasps for breath. “Incarceration is too comfortable a fate for you, my dear. And you are of no use to me dying in the mud behind a chain gang on Wobani.”_

 

“I was still a technician, and he needed one. He kept most of his private clients, and clients meant work, long hours of tedious, difficult, dangerous work. With me there, he didn’t need to get his own hands dirty, or pay wages. I had no choice. I had nowhere else to go - no contacts of my own in the Rebellion. I - I grew up in an Imperial facility. I’d sworn a formal oath of Imperial allegiance when I started working at the Consortium. He made sure any proof that I’d tried to defect was destroyed - that was what he told me. And he told me if I betrayed him - if I tried to escape, or made any kind of trouble, it would be the easiest thing to have me arrested as an Imperial traitor to the Republic. I knew he’d do it. He wouldn’t hesitate. And with my background, what chance would I have had? Who would have believed a word I said?” 

 

She could taste the bitterness in her own voice. 

 

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Ton Phanan’s stricken face. From across the table Antilles was looking at her with grim sympathy; he did her the kindness of offering neither pity nor platitudes nor well-meaning lies. 

 

“So I stayed. Until I met Captain Karrde. Even Lumer wouldn’t dare challenge Talon Karrde, certainly not for my sake. This is the first time I’ve seen any trace of my formulas since…then. I always thought he’d had everything in my old lab destroyed. That was what he told me he’d done.”

 

Loran, the pilot with the scarred face, spoke. “You said he had private buyers. Did he ever tell you who they were?”

 

“Sometimes, yes. But there were hundreds, maybe thousands, over the years - there’s no way - ”

 

“What about recently? Just in the past year, say?”

 

Kyah thought for a moment. “Only three that I know. A mining concern on Nkllon. Another on Koratas. I never knew the names. And a company called Cedring Geophysical, on Antares.”

 

“ _Antares_?” Antilles leaned forward, his voice suddenly sharp and urgent. “Did you say Antares? Are you sure?”

 

Startled, she said, “Yes.”

 

He sprang to his feet and began to pace. Suddenly the space seemed too small to contain him, and pilots scattered to let him pass. 

 

“It could be a coincidence,” said Mara Jade, quietly. 

 

“Maybe.” He came to a sudden halt, turned to look at her. “Is that what you think?”

 

“No,” she admitted.

 

That seemed to be all he needed to hear. “Shalla!”

 

A dark, statuesque human pilot stepped to attention. “Sir?”

 

“Did you hear what the doctor said?”

 

“Yes, General. Would you like me to start pulling files?”

 

“Everything you can find. Talk to Iella’s team too. And - ” He spun around to face Kyah, and she could see he was making an effort to find the right words. 

 

“Doctor, I know - ” He stopped. Tried again. “I can imagine, that this must be hard for you to talk about. But I have to ask anyway. Whatever you know about Elon Lumer and who he worked with, I need you to tell us, if you can. Please.”

 

_Please._ It still felt so unnatural, to hear that word and realise it was meant for her. 

 

There was only one answer she could give. This was Talon Karrde’s business as well as the Republic’s, and she had a debt to pay.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Corran had opened the shield door with a flick of his wrist; they left the three shredded pieces of it on the floor with Chewbacca grumbling in what passed for a Wookiee undertone that he hoped they wouldn’t need to close it up again. He and Corran were equally on edge, though Corran’s disquiet manifested as an entirely uncharacteristic silence as he made his way down the dank passage ahead of them. A pace behind was Tycho, holding an active holocam out in front of him in one hand and his cocked blaster in the other.

 

The three Rogues brought up the rear in Solo’s wake. Aja Alin, Yadira Noor and Asyr Sei’lar were all combat veterans, and they had fallen instinctively and immediately into echelon formation, each covering the other. Every now and then an almost imperceptible ripple shook Asyr’s night-dark fur, betraying her unease. Solo needed neither physiological indicators nor Jedi sixth sense to know that they were all of them in a similar frame of mind. He himself had not much faith that his smuggler’s poker face was as effective here as over a sabacc table, and was silently grateful for the darkness surrounding them.

 

There were four separate wings to the fortress, each with its own entrance, so he’d designated four search teams. Only Todra Mayn and three of her squadron remained in the sky to keep watch. He half-wished he were up there with them, but his nagging suspicion that the dead fortress was concealing something had grown to full-blown conviction, and there was no way he could have left the search to the others.

 

So far, the active comm at his hip had remained silent, save brief confirmations from the other three teams that they, too, had safely breached the outer gates. The tunnel that his team had found themselves in was long and almost oppressively narrow, illuminated only by emergency lanterns scattered sparsely along its length. From somewhere above, hidden vents blasted cold stale gusts of recirculated air down at unpredictable intervals, air that somehow both smelt and tasted faintly of ozone. Underfoot, the floor panels were rough and untreated-looking, but Solo had a suspicion that both floor and walls had been rendered anechoic to at least some degree, because their boots left no sound and even the crackle of static from the comm was almost instantly deadened in the rarefied air. 

 

“Main building ahead.” Corran’s terse voice floated back to them through the gloom. Sure enough, a small heavy durasteel door had come into view, lined with red spot beacons. “Let me go first.” 

 

No-one protested. Tycho raised the holocam, switching on a beam of light that flooded the passage, the better to record what was happening. For a moment it looked as though Corran would dispose of this door the same way as the last, but instead he reached out to a featureless patch of wall and pressed hard with the flat of his palm. With a low hiss, the panel lifted and slid upwards, revealing a tiny sensor. 

 

“Genetic access code,” he called to Solo. “I can override it.”

 

Solo drew the comm from his belt. “Dorset, Ooryl, Ma’lisa, any of you hit a second security door?”

 

“No, General?”

 

“Negative, General.”

 

“Not us, General.”

 

The door shot up with a scream of rusted metal, making them all flinch. 

 

“Wait,” Corran said, suddenly, but it was too late. “Tycho, no - _wait!_ ” 

 

The beam of light from the holocam was shaking, making shadows dance crazily across the walls. Tycho had stopped short on the threshold, staring at the chamber beyond. His face had drained abruptly of all colour and a muscle had begun to twitch in his jaw.

 

Solo moved swiftly forward, but the words he’d been about to say died on his lips.

For a moment it was as though fifteen years had fallen away, and he was reluctantly trailing an eager farm kid from a dustbowl babbling about a princess into a detention block suicide mission, both of them struggling to manage the unfamiliar bulk of their stolen stormtrooper uniforms. 

 

This command hub was empty and dark, but every detail was the same. Sharply angled walls of black slab durasteel jutted up and out from grated floors, forming a small many-faceted room and pentagonal tunnels that radiated outward from it, seemingly to infinity, in all directions. At half-metre intervals, flat round discs were set into the walls. Every single one of them glowed red. 

 

“What the hell…”

 

“Those doors. The cells. They’re all locked.” Tycho sounded nauseated. “I remember this - I - ”

 

“No. Not this,” Solo broke in, firmly. “It’s not the same, Tycho. They built it the same, is all. And there’s no prisoners here.”

 

Tycho drew a slightly shaky breath, then nodded. “We need to get these cells open. None of the life support systems are online - air, temperature, nothing - if the scanners missed something, and there’s anyone in there - ”

 

Corran was shaking his head. He, too, had gone very pale.

 

“What is it?”

 

Corran hesitated for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. His hand hovered inches above the inert control panel. “Brace yourself,” he said quietly. And then: “I’m sorry. I couldn’t see it before.”

 

His fingertips moved, tapping and gliding. Tensed momentarily, and then swept to the side as though brushing away dust.

 

All the lights came on at once, and Solo blinked at the sudden flood of brightness. A deafening clamour of buzzers filled the dead air, one after another, each accompanied by a hiss and a clang, forming a staccato symphony of noise as door after door shot open in rapid succession up and down each branching passage.

 

Chewbacca snarled, and behind him, Asyr screamed, a Bothan barking shriek. 

 

In the next moment, the smell reached the humans. 

 

Yadira hastily covered her mouth and nose with her arm; Aja pulled up her collar and began breathing rapid shallow breaths through it, using her sleeve to wipe her watering eyes. Over the sound of Chewbacca’s roars Solo could just hear Tycho beside him, coughing as violently as he was.

 

It was every battle he’d ever been in, every medbay afterwards, but worse. A thousand times worse. There was no cold antiseptic to undercut the stench, no smoke or currents of conditioned oxygen to break it up. The air was saturated with decay, so all-pervading and overpowering as to be almost visible - an unmistakable choking miasma of death. The ozone was undetectable now under the metallic reek of blood, so heavy that they might have been standing in a river of it. Fighting to quell the gorge rising in his throat, Solo made himself move forward to join Corran in front of the first of the now-open cells.

 

And for the first time in a very, very long time, found himself completely and utterly at a loss for words. 

 

Lit by the harsh white overhead light, the bodies looked vaguely unreal, as though their skin and fur had been crafted from rubber and plastoid. Like mannequins, they were piled in untidy heaps or stacked together against the walls in a manner that suggested the need to make the most efficient use of available space, and like mannequins, most were unclothed.  That was where the similarities ended.

 

If the bodies themselves looked artificial, their wounds did not. Han Solo’s gut clenched into knots as he took it all in.  Closest to him - mere inches from his boots - was a sprawled Talz, one of the few that was clothed, in roughspun fatigues so sodden with blood that only tiny patches of the grey material were still discernible. Slashing wounds, none of them less than a metre in length, ran down the length of its limbs. Its fur was black and matted with long-dried blood. Flung across its torso was the bloated, discoloured arm of a naked Gamorrean, whose body was flecked with needle tracks from head to foot. Blackened, swollen veins snaked outward from every puncture site like poison-clouded river deltas. Further on three Devaronians lay side-by-side; gaping bloodied craters in their foreheads where their horns had been indicated they were male, but an unbroken layer of carunculated black burns obscured everything else from the neck down on all three. Countless others were entirely unidentifiable, mauled and mutilated down to puppetlike masses of bone and tissue. 

 

“They are all like this.” Yadira’s voice was unsteady. “Every cell.” She and Aja Alin had reached the midway point of the opposite corridor. They were in control of themselves, but only just, and the effort it was costing them was writ large on their faces. 

 

From a third passage Asyr called, faintly, “Here also. General, I - what is this? What has happened here?” 

 

“I…don’t know.” The contents of his stomach seemed determined to make their way back up to the light, and Solo was forced to step back from the tableau of horror in front of him. It did no good, as it only brought the neighbouring cell into his line of sight, where in addition to naked bodies stacked like piles of old linen, a tangle of dismembered limbs sat like piled firewood in front of the door. 

 

He turned away, and caught sight of Tycho. His face was as white as his hair, locked in a frozen haunted rictus; he seemed to barely hear what Corran was saying to him. 

 

Then he began to move, holding the holocam up with a shaking hand to record the carnage in the cells. 

 

“We have to get him out of here,” Solo muttered to Corran as the Jedi drew level with him. 

 

“He won’t leave. Not until the place is searched top to bottom.” 

 

“Then I’ll make him,” Solo said through clenched teeth, striding forwards. “He’s been through enough - staying in this goddamned slaughterhouse will - ”

 

Corran caught his arm. “Han, listen to me,” he said, in an urgent whisper. “He won’t leave. Do you understand? He still believes he failed everyone who died in Lusankya. If you make him leave now, he’ll feel the same about them.” 

 

Solo opened his mouth to argue, but saw the look on Corran’s face and recognized it. He had seen it too often in his own wife and brother-in-law, the Jedi certainty that it was usually unwise to doubt. 

 

“Fine,” he growled. An eviscerated body so badly mutilated that it was recognizable only as some form of mammalian caught his eye and his stomach heaved again. “Tell me you can see something that explains this.” 

 

“I can’t.” Corran looked as sick as Solo himself felt. His gaze had fallen on a heap of what might at first glance have passed for sticks of charcoal if each one had not ended in twisted, shrivelled phalanges, some with still-discernible claws and knuckles. “Some have been dead for weeks. Some days, some only hours. I - ” he swallowed hard, “I can see the dying. But not why, not what came before.” 

 

The comm at Solo’s belt crackled. With mounting dread, he activated it. 

 

It was Dorset Konnair.

 

“Report.”

 

“We’ve swept the whole wing, General. It’s empty. No weapons, no life forms.”

 

“None at all?” he asked, hoping his relief wasn’t too obvious.

 

“None. But I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s a medical wing and it’s enormous, there must be two hundred rooms, if not more, but they are all surgical. No bacta tanks, no recovery rooms, nothing. And…no beds. Just gurneys. With - with restraints.” 

 

“Restraints?”

 

“Stun cuffs,” she said. “And chains.” 

 

For a moment there was absolute silence, save only for Chewbacca’s agitated huffs in the distance as he shuffled further down the passage checking cells. 

 

“Right.” Trying to keep his voice as even and authoritative as possible, Solo said, “Record everything on the holocams. By chance you find anyone or anything alive in there, get them out and comm me immediately.”

 

“Yes, General - wait, just a moment - ” Indistinct voices flooded the line, interspersed with loud creaks and scraping noises, and then she was back, a little breathless. “There’s something else. Iti’nan spotted it. A false wall. There is a storeroom here, full of crates. I see ID chips and data tapes, some flimsy files.”

 

A second indicator on Solo’s comm had begun to flash. “I’ve got Ma’lisa’s transmission incoming. Check every crate, check for more false walls. Stand by for my comm.”

 

“Yes, General.”

 

Through the second channel came the soft gravelled tones of Polearm’s Togorian Executive Officer, Ma’lisaris. “General, we have found the command centre for the ground defences.”

 

“Life-forms?”

 

“None, General. It is empty. Neither beings nor droids nor anything else. As are the gun nests.”

 

“The same gun nests that were firing at us?” 

 

“Affirmative, General. They are wired to a timed circuit. It is very crude, but nonetheless effective. None of the targeting systems have been activated, and there is no reserve ammunition. Two dozen munitions stores, and they are all empty as well. I cannot say for certain, but I believe they have been empty for some time.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Munitions stored outside optimal temperatures degrade, and these rooms are far too cold. No Imperial garrison would store their ordnance so. The thermoregulators are not online, and there are only small ventilation shafts. I do not think this temperature drop could have happened in a short time.” 

 

“You’re probably right. Are the circuits still intact?”

 

“Yes, general. There is only one. It links the guns and the explosive charges. It appears the initial trigger was remote, and the second would have been the timer Lt. Horn deactivated. Two waves: the first to lure us, the second to bring the buildings down.”

 

“All right. Record everything, and then go back through and check for false walls, hidden rooms, compartments, things like that. Dorset’s team found at least one, and if there’s one I’m willing to bet there’s more.”

 

“Copy that, General. I will report back when it is done.”

 

He lowered the comm. “Yadira.” 

 

She made her way to him, keeping her face averted from the line of open doors. Her eyes were wet, and bloodshot. “General?”

 

“Can you get an long-range connection going from here?”

 

“I - I think so.” She fumbled in her pack for a signal reader and tapped at it. “Yes.”

 

Describing what they had found in a formal, dispassionate report was entirely beyond him, and he could think of only one way to effectively convey the information to everyone that was waiting for it. “Send alerts to Blackmoon, to the Wild Karrde, and to Iella. Patch through Tycho’s holocam feed, then give me the comm.” 

 

She swallowed. “Yes sir.” 

 

He punched in a code into his own comm. After a moment, Ooryl Qrygg responded, “General Solo?”

 

“Report. Where are you?”

 

“In the back wing, General. Unless we have been lax in our search, there is nothing to indicate that the complex extends further. The wing backs onto solid rock. The walls are solid too. There is nothing to impede our scanners, so we do not believe there are passages into the mountain.”

 

“What’s in the wing?”

 

“Living quarters, General.”

 

“Barracks?” 

 

Ooryl hesitated. “Not…precisely.”

 

Solo gritted his teeth, bracing himself for the answer before asking, “Cells?” 

 

“No.” Ooryl sounded surprised. “We would say exactly the opposite.”

 

That made no sense. “What?” he demanded. 

 

“I will show you.”

 

Yadira looked up apprehensively. Asyr and Aja Alin had joined her. Corran and Tycho had vanished out of sight down one of the seemingly endless passages. At Solo’s elbow, Chewbacca grunted dismally. 

 

The footage flickered into life, and Solo blinked. 

 

Ooryl’s cam was panning across a foyer that would not have looked out of place in a luxury apartment building on Coruscant, with polished walls and stone floors decorated with thick rugs. Elegantly upholstered armchairs dotted the space, though several had been overturned, their cushions scattered everywhere. Gilt ornaments and sculptures had been knocked over as well; one had caught the edge of a tapestry woven with an Imperial crest, tearing it in half. The cam turned a corner into a bedroom furnished in a similar style, though it too was in disarray, with empty wardrobes laying open, rumpled sheets and scattered bits of clothing strewn across the floor.

 

“Is the whole wing like this?” he asked in disbelief.

 

“Yes, General. Approximately half the suites are smaller than this, but in most other respects they are identical.” 

 

“They left in a hurry,” Aja murmured. “The place looks trashed.” 

 

“We agree,” Ooryl said. “There are many personal effects remaining, but so far we have seen none that might be traceable to an owner.” 

 

“Look again,” Solo said. “I want to be sure.”

 

“Of course, General.” 

 

“And record everything. Full holo.”

 

“Yes sir.” 

 

Yadira held out her communicator. “Transmissions active, Sir. Shada d’Ukal of the Wild Karrde receiving for Captain Karrde. And Director Wessiri’s personal line has been redirected to Councillor Organa-Solo’s protocol droid.”

 

“Get him on the comm, I want to talk to him first.” 

 

“Channel seven, sir. General Antilles and the Blackmoon mission group are on eight.” 

 

He thumbed a switch. “Goldenrod, that you?” 

 

“It is I, C-3P0.” The droid sounded both resigned and annoyed. “How may I be of assistance, General?”

 

“The transmission coming through, you’re going to lock it down with my private encryption code, do you understand? And tell Leia to comm me before she watches it. I need to talk to her before she does, that clear?”

 

“Certainly, Sir. Might I ask - ”

 

“No.” Solo flicked the switch again, and the green-hued hologram of the droid was replaced by one of the briefing room on Blackmoon base. 

 

Wedge and Mara sat with the Wraith pilot Shalla Nelprin and a human woman Solo did not recognize. The rest of Wraith squadron had gathered around them. All were staring at the transmission feed with expressions ranging from horror to numb shock. The Twi’lek pilot, Diak Passik, was visibly trembling even with Face Loran’s arm around her. Voort, the Gamorrean, was holding himself very still; the hands of several squadmates rested supportively on his arms and shoulders. Mara’s face was an ivory mask, betraying nothing, but her fingers were clenched around the armrests of her seat; whatever she might have been truly feeling, it was not indifference. For a moment he wondered where else she might have seen something like this, and from what vantage point.

 

“I don’t have any answers,” he said flatly, before any of them could speak. “Neither does Corran. Every scrap of ammunition that didn’t get thrown at us when we strafed the place is gone. There’s not a living being left in the place, no troops, no officers. Just these - ” he swept an arm in the direction of the rows of cells, “ - and some crates full of cards and tapes.” 

 

“Are they…all dead?” The metallic translator’s voice from Voort was so quiet he could only just make out the words.

 

“Yes.”

 

The huge tusked head nodded jerkily. “I am glad.”

 

Then, unexpectedly, the woman next to Wedge spoke up. Her voice was shaky and hoarse. “General. Forgive me. I - there is no way to bring them back?” 

 

Solo grimaced. He had not even thought of that, but even without checking with Caetan and his medical team he knew it was impossible. As formidable a ship as she was, _Wayfarer_ could not have accommodated even a tenth of them. There were so many, and in the condition they were in, he’d need an entire fleet of freighters all equipped with sterile cold rooms - a fleet even the Republic certainly could not pull together at short notice.

 

“No,” he said reluctantly. “I wish I could.”

 

The woman seemed to be steeling herself for what she was about to say next. “Then - can you bring back samples? From them? Blood, tissue?”

 

He stared at her. “ _Samples?_ You want us to go in there to stick needles into a thousand maimed corpses before hacking pieces off of what’s left of them? Are you out of your damned mind? What - ”

 

“Han, wait,” Wedge interrupted. To the woman he said, “Doctor, do you think - ”

 

“The chemical I showed you,” she said, a little desperately. “It was from the body you found on Tatooine. Not the Senator.”

 

Wedge’s jaw tightened. 

 

“And not Raes?” Wes Jansen asked, quietly. “Not the informant?” 

She nodded. Her lips were trembling.

 

“Han, she’s right,” said Wedge. “There may be chemical compounds in their bodies - compounds that we can trace. It might be our only chance of finding out what happened to them. And tracking down who did it.” 

 

Solo rubbed his forehead, feeling sicker than ever. He understood why it needed to be done, but…

 

“Hell, Wedge, I’ve got a mission crew of pilots, not doctors. I can’t ask them to - ”

 

A loud, decisive roar cut him off. 

 

_I will do it._

 

“Chewie?” he said uncertainly. “You sure - ”

 

_I said, I will do it._ He reached out, tugged the commlink towards him and spoke directly into it. _Ask the doctor precisely what she needs, Wedge. I will do it._

 

“Thank you,” the woman said. There were tears in her eyes now. “Your medical officer should have pneumatic syringes, easy to use. A single vial of blood is enough for testing. As many as you can. Please.” 

 

The Wraiths’ cyborg pilot, Phanan, who had edged his way through the others to her, said in an incredulous undertone, “You speak Shyriiwook?” 

 

“Yes. A bit, anyway.” 

 

“I will help.” Yadira Noor’s voice broke in, quiet but resolute. “Them also.” 

 

She gestured to Aja Alin, who nodded and held up her own holocomm, in which Ma’lisaris and her assembled team of Polearm pilots were clearly visible, united in grim determination. “We will see it done,” the young Togorian said.

 

“I as well,” said Asyr. Her fur was bristling, but her horror seemed to have hardened to rage, and Solo suspected she was not alone in that. 

 

“All right,” he said. “Ma’lisa, have your team finish up your searches first. I want those crates and anything else you find loaded into the fighters. Whatever’s in those cards and files, Intelligence will need to see it. I’ll have Aitor send a shuttle down with the medical crew and their stuff, you can bring them in here with you when you’re done loading. Aja, I need you to slice this mainframe. Get everything you can off of it, no matter how unimportant it looks, and transfer it all to the _Wild Karrde_ and Iella’s team.”

 

“Yes sir.”

 

A sudden flurry of voices, full of cries and oaths, from Asyr’s comm told him that the fourth and final team now knew as well. In the holo he saw Asyr’s wingmate, a Sullustan named Naiyen Honn, her normally pale skin flushed with emotion under her tattoos as she spoke agitatedly in her own language to another of her species from Nova squadron. Asyr was standing in front of a cell filled with corpses that had not merely been mutilated, but completely flayed. Even in the nightmare jumble of disembodied skin and tissue it was impossible to miss the distinctive facial flaps on the top of the pile, and impossible not to recognize them for what they were. 

 

Dully, he wondered if any of them would ever forgive him for where he had brought them, what he had made them bear witness to. He was not sure he could have forgiven himself. 

 

“Get to it,” he said. As they made to obey, he added forcefully, “If at any point you need to get out, do it. Get back to your fighter and wait there for the rest of us. Don’t wait to ask me, don’t ask your strike team leader, don’t ask your wingman, just go. That’s an order.” 

 

They nodded or murmured their assent, then moved away to their work.

 

With sudden dread, Wedge asked anxiously, “Tycho. He’s…not with you, is he?”

 

Solo nodded grimly. Wes Jansen swore, a vicious Huttese curse.

 

“Corran’s with him. He wouldn’t leave.” 

 

“Han - ”

 

“I know. I’m getting him out.” He glanced down the nearest passage. Corran had reappeared, with Tycho in tow; both seemed to have aged a hundred years in the time it had taken to walk the five passages of the cell block. 

 

In the next instant his own comm blared an alert, signalling a call from the most securely encrypted channel he used.

 

_Leia_.

 

“I have to go.”

 

Wedge nodded silently. The Wraiths seemed at a loss for words. Mara’s commlink flashed; she glanced down at it and for the first time he saw her face change, lit up with a flicker of emotion he could not recognize. Instead of answering it she hit the kill switch, then shoved it roughly into a pouch on her utility belt and out of sight.

 

“I’ll report when I’m back on _Wayfarer_. Solo out.” 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

On most days, the Alderaan Memorial Wing of the Senate Building was arguably the most idyllic place in Coruscant - a bright, quiet haven amid the urban sprawl, filled with audience chambers, archives and offices, all linked by stately galleries overlooking lush indoor gardens or lined with priceless artwork. Renowned though it was, few of the visitors to the Senate Building ever saw it; you needed the highest possible level of security clearance, so not even all of the staff had access. Setting foot in the Alderaan Memorial Wing was a rare and cherished privilege, and most who were in a position to seek it out recognized it as such.

 

Mikasi was permitted into the wing only once a week, and initially it had been difficult not to abandon work entirely and wander out of the archives to explore the magnificent, seemingly endless halls. Only the prospect of losing her access privileges had checked her, and she had learned that if she allowed herself a few minutes of each visit to linger in some new, lovely spot, the guards were inclined to let it go, and with that she was content. 

 

She was en route to a summons, walking past a mural depicting the Old Court resplendent in ornate thranta-borne palanquins when she heard the commotion, and so unusual was such a thing in the Memorial Wing that she stopped dead and stared.

 

She did not recognize the beings who had gathered in front of the ornate doors to the inner sanctum; they were human, but with a few exceptions, all humans looked more or less alike to her. Three stood out from the rest by virtue of the formal Senatorial robes they wore, but from the colour of their sashes she knew they were second or even third-tier representatives, from worlds of little to no significance in the grander galactic scheme. 

 

No-one would have guessed it from listening to them, though. Surrounded by a coterie of assorted aides and hangers-on, they were ranting wildly, none troubling to pause so that another might speak uninterrupted.

 

“…unacceptable breach of protocol…”

 

“…gave us her word - _her solemn word of honour_ \- to grant us an audience…”

 

“…a disgrace, absolutely insupportable…”

 

“…that we should be kept from Her Excellency by a pusillanimous protocol droid! It is not to be borne!”

 

The protocol droid in question was a golden 3PO unit who was in fact doggedly standing its ground, golden arms locked akimbo, ovoid head swivelling wildly, trying to keep up with the barrage. Through the crowd, Mikasi could see that its right leg was plated in silver below the knee joint. 

 

“Gentlemen, please!” It had a male voice, fussy and prim as all of its kind. “As I have said: Her Excellency sends her most sincere apologies, but matters have arisen that demand her full attention. Were it not for the gravity of the situation at hand, I assure you that - ”

 

But once more it was drowned out as the protests broke out afresh. 

 

Mikasi edged forward. She had to get past, but the thought of pushing through the shouting men intimidated her, and their noise was making her head hurt. Vainly she looked around for one of the guards. She was still secretly afraid of them, but how much better if they were there to deal with the situation, instead of the droid…

 

The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a low, rich, delightfully husky woman’s voice, stately and full of quiet authority. It spoke as though it were speaking to her alone, but from the abrupt changes in the humans’ faces Mikasi knew they could hear it too.

 

“Enough.” 

 

The silence was immediate and absolute. 

 

“Thank you, Threepio. You can stand down. Let them enter.” 

 

The doors swung open. Massive and ornately carved, made of heavy dark wood in the old style, they moved inward in silent conformity. The men surged forwards, but the voice spoke again and stopped them in their tracks. 

 

“Her first.” 

 

The droid beckoned, and her fur prickled as the men turned to stare. Quickly she darted forward, clutching the tapes she held as tightly as she could without her claws doing damage. They made way for her grudgingly, displeased, but clearly not daring to voice their objections.

 

Inside was a room of fogstone, sparkling in the bright light flooding through bay windows to light up walls rich with traceries of inlay work that spread from floor to high, vaulted ceiling. It was not a large room, but everything about it seemed to have been designed to create an air of light and space and glittering, ethereal beauty. Mikasi stumbled forward, her muzzle twitching at the traces of heady perfume wafting past.

 

From a white plinth in the centre of the room, a hologram projected into the air. It was a human man, but it did not last long enough for her to see his face. She caught a glimpse of broad shoulders and dark hair, a gunbelt, and the stark red trail of Corellian bloodstripes ending at the top of high boots. Then the image faded, the plinth receded into the floor, and there was no longer anything obstructing their view of the figure seated behind the wide white bench on the raised dais. 

 

Mikasi did not usually find human faces aesthetically pleasing, but this was not an ordinary human. Her image was everywhere, there could not be many souls in the galaxy that did not know her face, but in person she was different; she was so very beautiful. No image or recording, Mikasi thought, had ever done her justice. 

 

The Princess of Alderaan’s coronet was her own lustrous hair, intricately braided and coiled and studded with gems that glowed like tiny embers. Instead of the finery in which she made her usual public appearances she wore the ceremonial robes of the High Council: a dark red cloak over a simple, formal ivory gown rich with embroidery. A few rings adorned her slender fingers, including one exquisitely-wrought band set with more glittering fire-gems. She was not a tall woman, but regal authority was imbued in every line of her small frame. The force of her personality dominated the entire room. 

 

The grim expression on her face softened a touch as she turned her attention to the shrinking Caamasi.

 

“Thank you.” She motioned towards a bench at the side of the dais. “I’m afraid I must ask you to wait a few moments.” Her huge brown eyes moved to the group of men, boring into them like laser gimlets. “While I deal with this.” 

 

Mikasi sat where she was bade, nervously, half-afraid and half-thrilling with anticipation. 

 

Now that they were actually standing before the woman they had demanded to see, the group seemed markedly less self-assured than they had been outside the chamber. To a man, they seemed unable to look directly at her, exchanging uncertain glances between each other instead, each clearly hoping another would be the first to speak.

 

Finally, one did.

“Your Highness.” He smiled toothily up at her, a smile she did not return. “It is my great honour to be granted this audience with you, nevertheless I must protest at being treated with such - ”

 

“With such what, Senator?” Leia Organa-Solo did not raise her voice, but it cut like a whip. 

 

The Senator swallowed, then opened his mouth again to continue, but he did not get the chance. 

 

“I know why you’re here.”

 

Someone in the back muttered a word that Mikasi did not quite catch, but she realised almost immediately what it was.

 

_Jedi._

 

The High Councillor did smile then, a tight thin smile without humour or warmth. “I don’t need mind powers to know your business. All of Coruscant knows, or very nearly. The only thing I do not know is why you would ever have thought that you could come to me with feeble lies and expect my ignorance, or my favour.” 

 

The Senator who had spoken merely gaped; the one closest to him attempted an expression of affronted righteousness, but beads of sweat were forming on his bald head and there was panic in his beady eyes. 

 

“Your Grace,” he stammered, “I assure you, I do not - ”

 

“I have no time for this, Senator. I sent my protocol droid to you with my apologies, because I gave you my word that I would see you, but my patience for this pretence is at an end, and you are not owed any courtesies from me. You and Senator Swift wished to petition for extra members to be added to your diplomatic contingents?”

 

The two men exchanged uncertain looks, then nodded, a little cautiously.

 

“Your Grace is quite right,” the first man, Swift, said. With a cajoling smile, he went on, “Such are the demands on our time, we find ourselves quite unable to complete our duties with such staff as we presently have at our disposal. If we were to - ”

 

“Indeed.” She infused that single word with more withering disdain than Mikasi would have imagined possible. “I will not entertain either request.” 

 

“Your Grace! I must - ”

 

“You must direct inquiries regarding diplomatic envoys to the Administrative Office, not to me, which you know full well. The Officers will expect full details of the qualifications, roles and responsibilities of the proposed additions, with supporting documentation, which they will verify before considering your requests. For myself, I am inclined to believe they will reject both, since I cannot imagine what legitimate contributions your masseur, Senator Swift, and your private dancer, Senator Vos, might make to the diplomatic effort. Nor do I see what benefit it would be to anyone but yourselves to have them housed in luxury on Coruscant at the Council’s expense.”

 

The two men had turned blotchily scarlet; the one called Vos was opening and closing his mouth in a way that made him look ludicriously like a landed fish. Their flock of aides were looking agitatedly at each other, shuffling and useless.

 

“And you, Senator Dinays.”

 

The third Senator took an unconscious step back, as though he were considering bolting.

 

“You bring me a contestation. The trade sanctions the Council has imposed on your system are unfair. A burden to you, you will tell me, and to your people.” A note of real danger had crept into her voice. Watching her, Mikasi had a vision of some avenging fury from an old half-remembered legend, as beautiful as she was remorseless. 

 

The Senator seemed to have no intention of even trying to make his case. He was staring at Leia Organa-Solo as though he expected her to strike him down where he stood. 

 

“The sanctions were imposed on you and your governors, not your people. That was my order. You know why it was done. How long did the elite of Arami prosper while its farmers starved in their fields? How many years did you defraud them of their profits? I know all about it. If I had more conclusive proof, you would already have been stripped of your office. As it is, I can merely recommend such an action. The formal motion is due before the Council at its next convening. You may be sure I will consider it a personal priority.” 

 

The man did not speak; indeed, Mikasi did not think he was capable of it. He had gone a curious ashy grey colour and was gulping for air. 

 

“This audience is over.” Leia Organa-Solo did not trouble to keep the disgust from her voice. She raised one slender hand, and out of nowhere two Noghri materialized from the shadows.

 

The group of men were already moving, spurred by the appearance of the galaxy’s most fearsome guards. They pushed and shoved and tripped over each other in their haste to be gone. The huge doors swung open before they had made it very far, and they hurriedly stepped aside out of the path of the woman who had just entered. 

 

She spared them not a single glance, moving through them with a brisk, purposeful stride. The Noghri bowed their heavy grey heads in deference at her approach.

 

The doors closed on the retreating flock and she smiled distractedly at Mikasi, who had risen from her seat to make a formal bow. “You found them?”

 

“Yes, my lady.”

 

“Well done.”

 

“Mikasi.” The Princess’s voice was kind, but her expression was strained as she looked down at Iella Wessiri. “I must ask you to hand over the tapes and leave us. This meeting must be private. Thank you for finding them for us.”

 

“Of course, Your Grace. It is my honour to serve you.” 

 

“And mine, to be so ably served.”

 

Iella Wessiri took the data tapes. Though she was not in the same league as the Princess of Alderaan, Mikasi did envy her eyes, which were a striking shade of not-quite-blue and not-quite-green. Mikasi’s own eyes were plain yellow-orange, just like all other Caamasi’s, and she had always wished they were a more exciting colour. 

 

The Noghri saw her out. She risked one last glance over her shoulder, managing only to catch a glimpse of another hologram flickering into life from the plith before the doors closed, leaving her alone in the empty gallery outside.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

He’d lost track of time, but when Han Solo finally emerged from the command centre of the Imperial stronghold for the last time he was startled to see that the sky had darkened to a heavy indigo-grey, studded with the faint glimmer of stars. It had taken hours, but at long last, there was nothing left to do. 

 

Almost nothing.

 

The pilots stood in a silent huddle, faces drawn and shoulders bowed with exhaustion and grief, revulsion and lingering incomprehension. They had done all he had asked, and all anyone could have expected of them. All told, the search had yielded eighteen crates filled with datacards, tapes and old-fashioned flimsy files, now all stowed in the holds of the fighters along with padded cases containing vial upon vial of blood and tissue drawn from the mutilated bodies in the cells. 

 

Chewbacca had uttered not a word since speaking with the female doctor on Blackmoon. Now, he shambled forwards and directed an inquiring glance at Solo.

 

“Go ahead.”

 

The Wookiee knelt, and from a pouch on his bandolier produced a lump of amber-coloured stone, striking it against a rock to ignite it. Carefully, he placed it atop the tall, flat stone he’d found to serve as altar. It burned without flame, glowing red along a tracery of deep veins, and the heavy scent of incense rose in clouds to perfume the air. 

 

He began to speak in a slow, deep rumble, directing the words at the buildings beyond.

 

_What was yours was taken from you,_ he said. _Now the skies are yours, and the beyond. I do not know your words, so I cannot say them. I do not know your rites, so I cannot perform them. You do not go with what is owed to you, and for that, I beg your pardon. Be at one with the Force, and may the Force grant you peace. By my name and by my life and by the debt that binds me I, Chewbacca son of Attichitcuk_ _swear this to you: if it is in my power to do so, I will avenge what was done to you._

 

He stepped back. Unbidden, Ma’lisaris came forward to take his place, murmuring her own prayer. Ooryl Qrygg followed, and then the three Sullustans. Next was Asyr, tears streaming freely down her muzzle, and no sooner had she stood than her place was taken by a Devaronian from Nova squadron whose name Solo did not know.

 

Only when the last pilot had risen from the makeshift altar did they turn their backs and disperse, returning one by one to their ships.

 

Dorset Konnair and her squadron lifted off first, followed by the remainder of Polearm, who fell into formation behind their waiting leader, and the Rogues with Tycho and Corran at the head of their phalanx. Last of all, Solo eased the _Falcon_ into the air, climbing up until he was level with the hovering X-wings. 

 

He looked across at Corran, visible in his fighter at the _Falcon_ ’s port side, and made a query gesture.

 

“On your signal,” Corran said quietly through the comm. 

 

“Copy that. All wings, head out.”

 

Throttles flared; the entire convoy turned as one and surged forwards into the stratosphere. Below were only the scattered winking lights of the farming settlements. 

 

Chewbacca barked.

 

“Now, Corran,” Solo said. 

 

He saw him nod, then reach out a hand, all five fingers flexed outward.

 

Far below, the silent dark hulk of the complex glowed suddenly orange, then crumpled as a series of explosions ripped through it, sending up an enormous cloud of dust and sending ominous shudders through the plateau on which it sat.

 

The charges had detonated in sequence, exactly as they had been set. He and Tycho had worked their way through every passage, meticulously reconnecting, resetting and reactivating each one, adding more when he thought it necessary, and finally fitting a detonator to replace the timer Corran had taken apart. They had not even needed a remote - not with a Jedi to flip the switch from several atmospheric layers away. 

 

He took one final look at the smouldering ruins - the best burial and cremation it had been in his power to give them - and found himself swallowing a lump in his throat, before the _Falcon_ shot forward and they were away, leaving the dead behind to burn.


	20. Interlude: Duty

The anteroom they had ordered him to wait in was a small one, a bare grey cell with one door in and one door out. He sat ramrod straight in his seat and tried, once more, to marshal his wandering thoughts. 

 

He’d never used to have trouble concentrating this way. They had always told him how focused he was, what a fine example to the others, how immune to distractions. They’d always used him as an example, right from the beginning, they had said…

 

He frowned. He’d always been able to remember every commendation, every word of praise. It fuelled him. It defined him. It always had. Why now could he not remember the words? 

 

He shook his head, a quick spasmodic twitch, as though to dislodge an irritating insect. It did not matter. Thinking of the past was unproductive - an indulgence, and therefore tantamount to insubordination. It was not for him to waste time on self-aggrandizement, or anything else that detracted from duty. He needed to find his focus; they would call on him soon, and he would need to be at his best to serve with distinction, as he had always done. It was unthinkable that he should do otherwise, that he should offer anything less. 

 

He had always done his duty.

 

The chamber was real enough. He made himself focus his attention on it, and the comforting solid familiarity of ferrocrete walls and panel-grid floors. Were it not for the bare rock overhead, there would be no indication at all that they were deep underground. He did not like the rock ceiling and did not look at it. The lack of symmetry unsettled him, and the unevenness, the traceries of discolouration that might have been damp or mineral veins or something else. 

 

The officer beside him was not looking at the ceiling either; he did not seem to be looking at anything at all in particular, but of course it was nigh-impossible to tell, with that kind. His lidless eyes, glassy black and inscrutable, neither moved nor changed. He might have been dead but for the occasional tremor that shook his left leg and made his boot heel rattle against the metal chair-leg. The last officer in the room twitched and snuffled and hissed in a familiar cacophony; were it possible for him to feel anything for the others he would likely have hated this officer, hated his ugly scaled features and undisciplined fidgeting and the shrill scraping of his bared claws on the sterile floor.

 

In directing his attention away from the unsavouriness of the Trandoshan he grew uneasily conscious of a sense of - not guilt, precisely, but impropriety. He could hear the commandants in the next room, and he was certain he was not supposed to. To eavesdrop would be undutiful. But then, he had been ordered to wait where he was, and to withdraw out of earshot would have been undutiful too, so he sat motionless, with conflicting proprieties spinning in his increasingly aching head.

 

“Rebel scum.” The voice shook with rage. The commandants were speaking of their enemies - the traitors, the spies, the criminals. They were not talking about him. He was no traitor. He’d never shirked his duty. 

 

“Coruscant? It must be. No?” Disbelief filled the commandant's voice, and why not; their enemies couldn't be trusted. “Borleias. You are sure?”

 

“You can see the transmission if you like.” The first commandant’s response was icy; he was not accustomed to being doubted.

 

“No need. Borleias, eh? So much the better perhaps. It is only a squadron base. Blackmoon. She will not be there.” 

 

The names meant nothing to him. Perhaps it was where their enemies lived. At once he reproached himself; it was not his duty to conjecture or speculate. He was a gunship captain. His duty was to carry out orders.

 

When they summoned him inside, he was the only one. The other two watched him with neither curiosity nor resentment. 

 

The orders were brief and to-the-point; distantly he registered that they were not quite like any he had ever received before, but that meant nothing. He would simply need to be more vigilant, to make sure he executed his orders flawlessly without the benefit of practice.

 

“What course shall we set?” he asked.

 

They looked at each other, agitated. He was not sure why. Had it been an inappropriate question? Names were mentioned, and immediately rejected. Finally the bald human with the pink, sweating head hissed a word he did not understand and said, “Somewhere far from here. We leave it to your judgment. Do not fail us. You have your orders. Dismissed.” 

 

He bowed. It was a high honour, above any he’d ever hoped to achieve. He would choose wisely. He would not fail them.

 

The commander with the thatch of hair - it looked like harvested hay - made an inarticulate noise of disgust. “Should be sending them on a proper execution, instead of - this. Damned waste. Curse those Rebel Scum, and that thrice-damned Alderaani whore.”

 

“It is an execution.” The bald human's voice held a strange note. “You’ve been dismissed. Go do your duty.”

 

He made his way to his ship, issuing instructions as he always did, crisply and mechanically. They obeyed without question, as always. The two from the chamber followed him; they had been issued the same orders, had been commanded additionally to follow him. He still had to decide where they must go. 

 

In his command chair, he realised with dismay that his head had begun to hurt again, and the fog he’d been fighting was creeping back, making things feel strange, and distant, and disconnected. _Focus._ He had his orders. _Rebel scum._ Why could he not stop thinking of the Rebel scum? He remembered a ship. Being ordered to destroy it. To destroy the Rebel scum. But that had been before, not now. Hadn’t it? It had. Now his duty was different.

 

The other captains were waiting - waiting for him, to set course. Yes. They had been ordered to follow him. _When we arrive, I will convey our final order, and we will all of us do our duty._

 

The name came to him out of nowhere, and he could think of no other. “Backmoon Base,” he said, without knowing why. “Borleias.”

 

He settled back, listening to the familiar roar of the hyperdrive powering up, preparing to take them to lightspeed. His head ached worse than ever. Around them, the stars lengthened into streams of cold fire, but in his head were spirals of words and voices, spinning and dancing and twining in and out of each other in an endless echoing tumult.

 

_“Blackmoon Base. Alderaan? Execution. Rebel Scum. Borleias. Coruscant - not Coruscant. Do your duty…duty…duty…”_


End file.
